1. That sex ratio will be favored which maximizes the descendants an individual will have and hence the number of gene copies transmitted.
2. Hardy’s weakness derived from his apparent inability to control the comings and goings of these divergent impulses and from his unwillingness to cultivate and sustain the energetic and risky ones.
3. Virginia Woolf’s provocative statement about her intentions in writing Mrs. Dalloway has regularly been ignored by the critics, since it highlights an aspect of her literary interests very different from the traditional picture of the “poetic” novelist concerned with examining states of reverie and vision and with following the intricate pathways of individual consciousness.
4. As she put in The Common Readers, “It is safe to say that not a single law has been framed or one stone set upon another because of anything Chaucer said or wrote; and yet, as we read him, we are absorbing morality at every pore.
5. With the conclusion of a burst of activity, the lactic acid level is high in the body fluids, leaving the large animal vulnerable to attack until the acid is recovered, via oxidative metabolism, by the liver into glucose, which is then sent (in part) back into the muscles for glycogen resynthesis.
6. Although Gutman admits that forced separation by sale was frequent, he shows that the slaves’ preference, revealed most clearly on plantations where sale was infrequent, was very much for stable monogamy.
7. Gutman argues convincingly that the stability of the black family encouraged the transmission of–and so was crucial in sustaining–the Black heritage of folklore, music, and religious expression from one generation to another, a heritage that slaves were continuingly fashioning out of their African and American experience.
8. This preference for exogamy, Gutman suggests, may have derived from West African rules governing marriage, which, though they differed from one tribal group to another, all involved some kind of prohibition against unions with close kin.
9. His thesis works relatively well when applied to discrimination against Blacks in the United States, but his definition of racial prejudice as “racial—based negative prejudgments against a group general accepted as a race in any given region of ethnic competition,” can be also including hostility toward such ethnic groups as the Chinese in California and the Jews in medieval Europe.
10. Such variations in shape, chemistry, conduction speed, excitation threshold, and the like as had been demonstrated in nerve cells remained negligible in significance for any possible correlation with the manifold dimensions of mental experience.
11. It was possible to demonstrate by other methods refined structural difference among neuron types; however, proof was lacking that the quality of the impulse or its condition was influenced by these differences, which seemed instead to influence the developmental patterning of the neural circuits.
12. Although qualitative variance among nerve energies was never rigidly disproved, the doctrine was generally abandoned in favor of the opposing view, namely, that nerve impulses are essentially homogeneous in quality and are transmitted as “common currency” throughout the nervous system.
13. Other experiment revealed slight variations in the size, number, arrangement, and interconnection of the nerve cells, but as far as psycho-neural correlations was concerned, the obvious similarities of these sensory fields to each other seemed much more remarkable than any of the minute differences.
14. Although some experiments show that, as an object becomes more familiar, its internal representation becomes more holistic and the recognition process correspondingly more parallel, the weight of the evidence seems to support the serial hypothesis, at least for objects that are not notably simple and familiar.
15. In large part as a consequence of the feminist movement, historians have focused a great deal of attention in recent years on determining more accurately the status of women in various periods.
16. If one begins by examining why ancients refer to Amazons, it becomes clear that ancient Greek descriptions of such societies were meant not so much to represent observed historical fact—real Amazonian societies—but rather to offer “moral lessons” on the supposed outcome of women’s rule in their own society.
17. Thus, for instance, it may come as a shock to mathematicians to learn that the Schrodinger equation for the hydrogen atom is not a literally correct description of this atom, but it is an approximation to a somewhat more correct equation (taking account of spin, magnetic dipole, and relativistic effects); and that this corrected equation is itself only an imperfect approximation to an infinite set of quantum field—theoretical equations.
18. The physicist rightly dreads precise argument, since an argument that is convincing only if it is precise loses all its force if the assumption on which it based on are slightly changed, whereas an argument that is convincing though imprecise may well be stable under small perturbations of its underlying assumptions.
19. However, as they gained cohesion, the Bluestockings came to regard themselves as women’s group and to possess a sense of female solidarity lacking in the salonnieres, who remained isolated from one another by the primacy each held in her own salon.
20. As my own studies have advanced, I have been increasingly impressed with the functional similarities between insect and vertebrate societies and less so with the structural differences that seem, at first glance, to constitute such an immense gulf between them.
21. Although fiction assuredly springs from political circumstances, its authors react to those circumstances other than ideology, and talking about novels and stories primarily as instruments of ideology circumvents much of the fictional enterprise.
22. Is this a defect, or are the authors working out of, or trying to forge, a different kind of aesthetic?
23. In addition, the style of some Black novels, like Jean Toomer’s Cane, verges on expressionism or surrealism; does this technique provide a counterpoint to the prevalent theme that portrays the fate against which Black heroes are pitted, a theme usually conveyed by naturalistic modes of expression?
24. Black fiction surveys a wide variety of novels, bringing to our attention in the process some fascinating and little known works like James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.
25. A low number of algal cells in the presences of a high number of grazers suggested, but did not prove, that the grazers had removed most of the algae.
26. The role those anthropologists ascribe to evolution is not of dictating the details of human behavior but one of imposing constraints—ways of feeling, thinking, and acting that “come naturally” in archetypal situations in any culture.
27. Which of the following most probably provides an appropriate analogy from human morphology for the “detail” versus “constraints” distinction made in the passage in relation to human behavior?
28. Although these molecules allow radiation at visible wavelengths, where most of the energy of sunlight is concentrated, to pass through, but they absorb some of the longer-wavelength, infrared emissions radiated from the Earth’s surface, radiation that would otherwise be transmitted back into space.
29. Perhaps the fact that many of these first studies considered only algae of a size that could be collected in a net (net phytoplankton), a practice that overlook the smaller phytoplankton (nannoplankton) that we now know grazers are mostly likely to feed on, led to a de-emphasis of the role of grazers in subsequent research.
30. Studies by Hargrave and Green estimated natural community grazing rates by measuring feeding rates of individual zooplankton species in the laboratory and then computing community grazing rates for field conditions using the known population density of grazers.
31. In the periods of peak zooplankton abundance, that is, in the late spring and in the summer, Haney recorded the maximum daily community grazing rates, for nutrient—poor lakes and bog lakes, respectively, of 6.6 percent and 114 percent of daily phytoplankton production.
32. The hydrologic cycle, a major topic on the science, is the complete cycle of phenomena through which water passes, beginning as atmospheric water vapor, passing into liquid and solid form as precipitation, thence along and into the ground surface, and finally again returning to the form of atmospheric water vapor by means of evaporation and transpiration.
33. Only when a system possesses natural or artificial boundaries that associate the water within it with the hydrologic cycle may the entire system properly be termed hydrogeologic.
34. The historian Frederick J. Turner wrote in the 1890’s that the agrarian discontent that had been developing steadily in the United States since about 1870s had been precipitated by the closing of the internal frontier—that is, the depletion of available new land needed for further expansion of the American farming system.
35. In the early 1950’s, historian who studied preindustrial Europe (which we may define here as Europe in the period from roughly 1300 to 1800) began, for the first time in large numbers, to investigate more of the preindustrial European population than the 2 or 3 percent who comprised the political and social elite: the kings, generals, judges, nobles, bishops, and local magnates who had hitherto usually filled history books.
36. Historians such as Le Roy Ladurie have used the document to extract case histories, which have illuminate the attitudes of different social groups(these attitudes include, but are not confined to, attitude toward crime and the law) and have revealed how the authorities administered justice.
37. It can be inferred from the passage that a historian who wished to compare crime rate per thousand in a European city in one decade of the fifteenth century with crime rates in another decade of that century would probably be best aided by better information about which of the following?
38. My point is that its central consciousness—its profound understanding of class and gender as shaping influences on people’s lives—owes much to that earlier literary heritage, a heritage that, in general, has not been sufficiently valued by most contemporary literary critics.
39. Even the requirement that biomaterials processed from these materials be noxious to host tissue can be met by techniques derived from studying the reactions of tissue culture to biomaterials or from short—term implant.
40. But achieving necessary matches in physical properties across interface between living and non—living matter requires knowledge of which molecules control the bonding of cells to each other—an area that we have not yet explored thoroughly.
41. Islamic law is a phenomenon so different from all other forms of law—notwithstanding, of course, a considerable and inevitable number of coincidences with one or the other of them as far as subject matter and positive enactment are concerned—that its study is indispensable in order to appreciate adequately the full range of possible legal phenomena.
42. Both Jewish law and canon law are more uniform than Islamic law. Though historically there is a discernible break between Jewish law of the sovereign state of ancient Israel and of the Diaspora (the dispersion of Jewish people after the conquest of Israel), the spirit of the legal mater in later parts of the Old Testament is very close to that of the Talmud, one of the primacy codifications of Jewish law in Diaspora.
43. Islam, on the other hand, represented a radical breakaway from the Arab paganism that proceed it; Islamic law is the result of an examination, from a religious angle, of legal subject matter that was far from uniform, comprising as it did the various components of the laws of pre—Islamic Arabia and numerous legal elements taken over from the non—Arab people of the conquered territories.
44. One such novel idea is that of inserting into the chromosomes of plants discrete genes that are not a part of the plants’ natural constitution: specifically, the idea of inserting into nonleguminous plants the genes, if they can be identified and isolated, that fit the leguminous plants to be hosts for nitrogen—fixing bacteria. Hence, the intensified research on legumes.
45. It is one of nature’s great ironies that the availability of nitrogen in the soil frequently sets an upper limit on plant growth even though the plants’ leaves are bathed in a sea of nitrogen gas.
46. Unless they succeed, the yield gains of the Green Revolution will be largely lost even if the genes in legumes that equip those plants to enter into a symbiosis with nitrogen fixers are identified and isolated, and even if the transfer of those gene complexes, once they are found, becomes possible.
47. Its subject (to use Maynard Mack’s categories) is “life—as—spectacle,” for readers, diverted by its various incidents, observes its hero Odysseus primarily from without; the tragic Iliad, however, presents “life—as—experience”: readers are asked to identify with the mind of Achilles, whose motivations render him not a particularly likable hero.
48. Most striking among the many asymmetries evident in an adult flatfish is eye placement: before maturity one eye migrates, so that in an adult flatfish both eyes are on the same side of the head.
49. A critique of the Handlins’ interpretation of why legal slavery did not appear until the 1660s suggests that assumption about the relation between slavery and racial prejudice should be reexamined, and that explanations for the different treatment of Black slaves in North and South America should be expanded.
50. The best evidence for the layered mantel thesis is the well—established fact that volcanic rocks found on oceanic islands, islands believed to result from mantle plumes arising from the lower mantle, are composed of material fundamentally different from that of the midocean ridge system, whose sources, most geologists contend, is the upper mantle.
51. Some geologists, however, on the basis of observations concerning mantle xenoliths, argue that the mantle is not layered, but that heterogeneity is created by fluid rich in “incompatible elements” (elements tending toward liquid rather than solid state) percolating upward and transforming portions of the upper mantle irregularly, according to the vagaries of the fluid’s pathways.
52. Fallois proposed that Proust had tried to begin a novel in 1908, abandoned it for what was to be a long demonstration of Saint—Beuve’s blindness to the real nature of great writing, found the essay giving rise to personal memories and fictional developments, and allowed these to take over in a steadily developing novel.
53. The very richness and complexity of the meaningful relationships that kept presenting and rearranging themselves on all levels, from abstract intelligence to profound dreamy feelings, made it difficult for Proust to set them out coherently.
54. But those of us who hoped, with Kolb, that Kolb’s newly published complete edition of Proust’s correspondence for 1909 would document the process in greater detail are disappointed.
55. Now we also examine the culture as we Mexican Americans have experienced it, passing from a sovereign people to compatriots with newly arriving settlers to, finally, a conquered people—a charter minority on our own land.
56. It is possible to make specific complementary DNA’s (cDNA’s) that can serve as molecular probes to seek out the messenger RNA’s (mRNA’s) of the peptide hormones. If brain cells are making the hormones, the cells will contain these mRNA’s. If the products the brain cells make resemble the hormones but are not identical to them, then the cDNA’s school still blind to these mRNA’s, but should not blind as tightly as they would to mRNA’s for the true hormones.
57. The molecular approach to detecting peptide hormones using cDNA probes should also be much faster than the immunological method because it can take years of tedious purification to isolate peptide hormones and then develop antiserums to them.
58. Nevertheless, researchers of the Pleistocene epoch have developed all sorts of more or less fanciful model schemes of how they would have arranged the Ice Age had they been in charge of events.
59. The succession was based primarily on a series of deposits and events not directly related to glacial and interglacial periods, rather than on the more usual modern methods of studying biological remains in interglacial beds themselves interstratified within glacial deposits.
60. There have been attempts to explain these taboos in terms of inappropriate social relationships either between those who are involved and those who are not simultaneously involved in the satisfaction of a bodily need, or between those already satiated and those who appear to be shamelessly gorging.
61. Many critics of Family Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights see its second part as a counterpoint that comments on, if it dose not reverse, the first part, where a “romantic” reading receives more confirmation.
62. Granted that the presence of these elements need not argue an authorial awareness of novelistic construction comparable to that of Henry James, their presence dose encourage attempts to unify the novel’s heterogeneous parts.
63. This is not because such an interpretations necessarily stiffens into a thesis (although rigidity in any interpretation of this or any novel is always a danger), but because Wuthering Heights has recalcitrant elements of undeniable power that, ultimately, resist inclusion in an all—encompassing interpretation.
64. The isotopic composition of lead often varies from one source of common copper ore to another, with variations exceeding the measurement error; and preliminary studies indicate virtually uniform isotopic composition of the lead from a single copper—ore source.
65. More probable is bird transport, either externally, by accidental attachment of the seeds to feathers, or internally, by the swallowing of fruit and subsequent excretion of the seeds.
66. A long—held view of the history of the English colonies that because the United States has been that England’s policy toward these colonies before 1763 was dictated by commercial interests and that a change to a more imperial policy, dominated by expansionist militarist objectives, generate the tensions that ultimately led to the American Revolution.
67. It is not known how rare this resemblance is, or whether it is most often seen in inclusions of silicates such as garnet, whose crystallography is generally somewhat similar to that of diamond; but when present, the resemblance is regarded as compelling evidence that the diamonds and inclusions are truly cogenetic.
68. Even the “radical” critiques of this mainstream research model, such as the critique developed in Divided Society, attach the issue of ethnic assimilation too mechanically to factors of economics and social mobility and are thus unable to illuminate the cultural subordination of Puerto Ricans as a colonial minority.
69. They are called virtual particles in order to distinguish them from real particles, whose lifetimes are not constrained in the same way, and which can be detected.
70. Open acknowledgement of the existence of women’s oppression was too radical for the United States in the fifties, and Beauvoir’s conclusion, that change in women’s economic condition, though insufficient by itself, “remains the basic factor” in improving women’s situations, was particularly unacceptable.
71. Other theorists propose that the Moon was ripped out of the Earth’s rocky mantle by the earth’s collision with another large celestial body after much of the Earth’s iron fell to its core.
72. However, recent scholarship has suggested that those aspects of early New England culture that seem to have been most distinctly Puritan, such as the strong religious orientation and the communal impulse, were not even typical of New England as a whole, but were largely confined to the two colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut.
73. Thus, what in contrast to the Puritan colonies appears to Davis to be peculiarly Southern—acquisitiveness, a strong interest in politics and the law, and a tendency to cultivate metropolitan cultural models—was not only more typically English than the cultural patterns exhibited by Puritan Massachusetts and Connecticut, but also almost certainly characteristic of most other early modern British colonies from Barbados north to Rhode Island and New Hampshire.
74. Portrayals of the folk of Mecklenburg Country, North Carolina, whom he remembers from early childhood, of the jazz musicians and tenement roofs of his Harlem days, of Pittsburg steelworkers, and his reconstruction of classical Greek myths in the guise of the ancient Black kingdom of Benin, attest to this.
75. These historians, however, have analyzed less fully the development of specifically feminist ideas and activities during the same period.
76. A very specialized feeding adaptation in zooplankton is that of the tadpoletike appendicularian who lives in a walnut—sized (or smaller) balloon of mucus equipped with filters that capture and concentrated phytoplankton.
77. Apparently most massive stars manage to lose sufficient material that their masses drop below the critical value of 1.4M before they exhaust their nuclear fuel.
78. This is so even though the armed forces operate in an ethos of institutional change oriented toward occupational equality and under the federal sanction of equal pay for equal work.
79. An impact capable of ejecting a fragment of the Martian surface into an earth—intersecting orbit is even less probable than such an event on the Moon, in view of the Moon’s smaller size and closer proximity to earth.
80. Not only are liver transplants never rejected, but they even induce a state of donor—specific unresponsiveness in which subsequent transplants of other organs, such as skin, from that donor are accepted permanently.
81. As rock interfaces are crossed, the elastic characteristics encountered generally abruptly, which causes part of the energy to be reflected back to the surface, where it is recorded by seismic instruments.
82. While the new doctrine seems almost certainly correct, the one papyrus fragment raises the specter that another one may be unearthed, showing, for instance, that it was a posthumous production of the Danaid tetralogy which bested Sophocles, and throwing the date once more into utter confusion.
83. The methods that a community devises to perpetuate itself come into being to preserve aspects of the cultural legacy that that community perceives as essential.
84. Traditionally, pollination by wind has been viewed as a reproductive process marked by random events in which the vagaries of the wind are compensated for by the generation of vast quantities of pollen, so that the ultimate production of new seeds is assured at the expense of producing much more pollen than is actually used.
85. Because the potential hazards pollen grains are subject to as they are transported over long distances are enormous, wind pollinated plants have, in the view above, compensated for the ensuing loss of pollen through happenstance by virtue of producing an amount of pollen that is one to three orders of magnitude greater than the amount produced by species pollinated by insects.
86. For example, the spiritual arrangement of scale-bract complexes on ovule-bearing pine cones, where the female reproductive organs of conifers are located, is important to the production of airflow patterns that spiral over the cone’s surface, thereby passing airborne pollen from one scale to the next.
87. Friedrich Engels, however, predicted that women would be liberated from the “social, legal, and economic subordination” of the family by technological developments that made possible the recruitment of “the whole female sex into public industry”.
88. It was not the change in office technology, but rather the separation of secretarial work, previously seen as an apprenticeship for beginning managers, from administrative work that in the 1880s created a new class of “dead-end” jobs, thenceforth considered “women’s work”.
89. The increase in the numbers of married women employed outside the home in the twentieth century had less to do with the mechanization of housework and an increase in leisure time for these women than it did with their own economic necessity and with high marriage rates that shrank the available pool of single women workers, previously, in many cases, the only employers would hire.
90. For one thing, no population can be driven entirely by density-independent factors all the time.
91. In order to understand the nature of the ecologist’s investigation, we may think of the density-dependent effects on growth parameters as the “signal” ecologists are trying to isolate and interpret, one that tends to make the population increase from relatively low values or decrease from relatively high ones, while the density-independent effects act to produce “noise” in the population dynamics.
92. But the play’s complex view of Black self-esteem and human solidarity as compatible is no more “contradictory” than Du Bois’s famous, well-considered ideal of ethnic self-awareness coexisting with human unity, or Fanon’s emphasis on an ideal internationalism that also accommodates national identities and roles.
93. In which of the following does the author of the passage reinforce his criticism of responses such as Isaacs’ to .
94. Inheritors of some of the viewpoints of early twentieth-century Progressive historians such as Beard and Becker, these historians have put forward arguments that deserve evaluation.
95. Despite these vague categories, one should not claim unequivocally that hostility between recognizable classes cannot be legitimately observed.
96. Yet those who stress the achievement of a general consensus among the colonists cannot fully understand that consensus without understanding the conflicts that had to be overcome or repressed in order to reach it.
97. It can be inferred from the passage that the author would be most likely to agree with which of the following statement regarding socioeconomic class and support for the rebel and Loyalist causes during the American Revolutionary War?
98. She wished to discard the traditional methods and established vocabularies of such dance forms as ballet and to explore the internal sources of human expressiveness.
99. The correlation of carbon dioxide with temperature, of course, does not establish whether changes in atmosphere composition caused the warming and cooling trends or were caused by them.
100. Although it has been possible to infer from the goods and services actually produces what manufactures and servicing trade thought their customers wanted, only a study of relevant personal documents written by actual consumers will provide a precise picture of who wanted what.
101. With regard to this last question, we might note in passing that Thompson, while rightly restoring laboring people to the stage of eighteenth-century English history, has probably exaggerate the opposition of these people to the inroads of capitalist consumerism in general; for example, laboring people in eighteenth-century England readily shifted from home-brewed beer to standardized beer produced by huge, heavily capitalized urban breweries.
102. Such philosophical concerns as the mind-body problem or, more generally, the nature of human knowledge they believe, are basic human question whose tentative philosophical solutions have served as the necessary foundations on which all other intellectual speculation has rested.
103. The idea of an autonomous discipline called “philosophy” distinct from and sitting in judgment on such pursuits as theology and science turns out, on close examination, to be of quite recent origin.
104. They were fighting, albeit discreetly, to open the intellectual world to the new science and to liberate intellectual life from ecclesiastical philosophy and envisioned their work as contributing to the growth, not of philosophy, but of research in mathematics and physics.
105. But the recent discovery of detailed similarities in the skeletal structure of the flippers in all three groups undermines the attempt to explain away superficial resemblance as due to convergent evolution—the independence development of similarities between unrelated groups in response to similar environmental pressures.
106. As a consequence, it may prove difficult or impossible to establish for a successful revolution a comprehensive and trustworthy picture of those who participated, or to answer even the most basic questions one might pose concerning the social origins of the insurgents.
107. For the woman who is a practitioner of feminist literary criticism, the subjective versus objective, or critic-as-artist-or-scientist, debate has special significance; for her, the question is not only academic, but political as well, and her definition will court special risks whichever side of the issue it favors.
108. If she define feminist criticism as objective and scientific-a valid, verifiable, intellectual method that anyone, whether man or woman, can perform-the definition not only preclude the critic-as-artist approach, but may also impede accomplishment of the utilitarian political objectives of those who seek to change the academic establishment and its thinking, especially about sex roles.
109. These questions are political in the sense that the debate over them will inevitably be less an exploration of abstract matters in a spirit of disinterested inquiry than an academic power struggle in which the careers and professional fortunes of many women scholars-only now entering the academic profession in substantial numbers-will be at stake, and with them the changes for a distinctive contribution to humanistic understanding, a contribution that might be an important influence against sexism in our society.
110. Perhaps he believed that he could not criticize American foreign policy without endangering the support for civil rights that he had won from the federal government.
111. However, some broods possess a few snails of the opposing hand, and in predominantly sinistral broods, the incidence of dextrality is surprisingly high.
112. In experiment, an injection of cytoplasm from dextral eggs changes the patterns of sinistral eggs, but an injection from sinistral eggs does not influence dextral eggs.
113. Recently some scientists have concluded that meteorites found on Earth and long believed to have a Martian origin might actually have been blasted free of Mars’s gravity by the impact on Mars of other meteorites.
114. Under the force of this view, it was perhaps inevitable that the art of rhetoric should pass from the status of being regarded as of questionable worth (because although it might be both a source of pleasure and a means to distort truth and a source of misguided action) to the status of being wholly condemned.
115. None of these translations to screen and stages, however, dramatize the anarchy at the conclusion of A Connecticut Yankee, which ends with the violent overthrow of Morgan’s three-year-old progressive order and his return to the nineteenth century, where he apparently commits suicide after being labeled a lunatic for his incoherent babblings about drawbridges and battlements.
116. Calculations of the density of alloys based on Bernal-type models of the alloys metal component agreed fairly well with the experimentally determined values from measurements on alloys consisting of a noble metal together with a metalloid, such as alloys of palladium and silicon, or alloys consisting of iron, phosphorus, and carbon, although small discrepancies remained.
117. And Walzer advocates as the means of eliminating this tyranny and of restoring genuine equality “the abolition of the power of money outside its sphere”.
118. Is it not tyrannical, in Pascal’s sense, to insist that those who excel in “sensitivity” or “the ability to express compassion” merit equal wealth with those who excel in qualities (such as “the quality for hard work”) essential in producing wealth?
119. Yet Walzer’s agreement, however deficient, does point to one of the most serious weakness of capitalism—namely, that is brings to predominant they have earned their material rewards, often lack those others qualities that evoke affection or admiration.
120. The appreciation of tradition oral American Indian Literature has been limited, hampered by poor translations and by the difficulty, even in the rare culturally sensitive and aesthetically satisfying translation, of completely conveying the original’s verse structure, tone, and syntax.
121. Mores, which embodied each culture’s ideal principles for governing every citizen, were developed in the belief that the foundation of a community lies in the cultivation of individual powers to be placed in service to the community.
122. Only in the case of the February Revolution do we lack a useful description of participants that characterize it in the light of what social history has taught us about the process of revolutionary mobilization.
123. Human genes contain too little information even to specify which hemisphere of the brain each of a human’s 10¬¬¬¬¬11¬ neurons should occupy, let alone the hundreds of connections that each neuron makes.
124. Anthropologists and others are no much firmer ground when they attempt to describe the cultural norms for a small homogeneous tribe or village than when they undertake the formidable task of discovering the norms that exist in a complex modern nation-state composed of many disparate groups.
125. The Italian influence is likely, whatever Valdez’ immediate source; the Mexican carpas themselves are said to have originated from the theater pieces of a sixteenth-century Spanish writer inspired by encounters with Italian commedia dell’arte troupes on tour in Spain.
126. It had thus generally been by way of the emphasis on oral literary creativity that these Chicago writers, whose English-language works are sometimes uninspired, developed the powerful and arresting language that characterized their Spanish-language works.
127. This declaration, which was echoed in the text of the Fourteenth Amendment, was designed primarily to counter the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford that Black people in the United States could be denied citizenship.
128. The broad language of the amendment strongly suggests that its frames were proposing to write into the Constitution not a laundry list of specific civil rights but a principle of equal citizenship that forbids that forbids organized society from treating any individual as a member of an inferior class.
129. This doctrine has broadened the application of the Fourteenth Amendment to other, nonracial forms of discrimination, for while some justices have refused to find any legislative classification other than race to be constitutionally disfavored, most have been receptive to arguments that at least some nonracial discriminations, sexual discrimination in particular, are “suspect” and deserve this heightened scrutiny by the courts.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Logic Error
Loose generalizations
Drawing conclusions about groups of people on the basis of stereotypes.
Example: French people are more romantic.
Hasty generalizations
Arriving at a conclusion without enough evidence.
Example: Asian-American students are better in math.
Circular Reasoning
Restating in different words what has already been stated.
Example: Dieting is hard because it requires consuming fewer calories.
Single cause-effect
Claiming that only one event caused another when there may be no real connection.
Example: When I sat down at the computer it stopped working, so I must have done something
wrong.
Slippery Slope
Assumes a chain of cause-effect relationships with very suspect connections.
Example: Because I failed my exam, my parents were mad, I lost my wallet, my car wouldn't start,
and I got fired.
Non Sequitur
The first part of the idea does not relate to the other.
Example: I did well in school because I always wore nice clothes.
Either/Or
Suggesting only two alternatives when the issue may be much more complex.
Example: America--love it or leave it!
False Authority
Draws attention away from the evidence and leans on the popularity of someone who may have
little knowledge of the issue or product.
Example: Kathie Lee Gifford, a popular TV celebrity, says that cruises are wonderful, so they
must be.
Ad Hominem
Attacking the person instead of the ideas.
Example: Don't vote for Jerry Brown; he's a left-wing fanatic, a throwback to the 60s who
meditates and eats health foods.
Bandwagon Thinking
Claiming that most people agree so it must be right.
Example: I wouldn't have cheated on my income taxes, but everyone else does, so why shouldn't I?
Stacking the deck
Giving a slanted view of the issue by focusing only on one side.
Example: I deserve to get an A in the class because I like the teacher, work hard, and attend class.
Appeal to Emotion
Exploiting the audience's feeling in order to get them on your side.
Example: I believe I deserve a scholarship because I am an orphan who grew up in a dysfunctional
foster family.
Ignoring the question
Changing the topic before it is really considered
Example: The criminal won't say where he was on the night of the crime, but he does remember
being teased relentlessly as a child.
Trivial objections
Can be similar to ad hominem in that it focuses on things unimportant to the issue at hand.
Example: I think Ross Perot would make a terrible president. His ears are huge.
Drawing conclusions about groups of people on the basis of stereotypes.
Example: French people are more romantic.
Hasty generalizations
Arriving at a conclusion without enough evidence.
Example: Asian-American students are better in math.
Circular Reasoning
Restating in different words what has already been stated.
Example: Dieting is hard because it requires consuming fewer calories.
Single cause-effect
Claiming that only one event caused another when there may be no real connection.
Example: When I sat down at the computer it stopped working, so I must have done something
wrong.
Slippery Slope
Assumes a chain of cause-effect relationships with very suspect connections.
Example: Because I failed my exam, my parents were mad, I lost my wallet, my car wouldn't start,
and I got fired.
Non Sequitur
The first part of the idea does not relate to the other.
Example: I did well in school because I always wore nice clothes.
Either/Or
Suggesting only two alternatives when the issue may be much more complex.
Example: America--love it or leave it!
False Authority
Draws attention away from the evidence and leans on the popularity of someone who may have
little knowledge of the issue or product.
Example: Kathie Lee Gifford, a popular TV celebrity, says that cruises are wonderful, so they
must be.
Ad Hominem
Attacking the person instead of the ideas.
Example: Don't vote for Jerry Brown; he's a left-wing fanatic, a throwback to the 60s who
meditates and eats health foods.
Bandwagon Thinking
Claiming that most people agree so it must be right.
Example: I wouldn't have cheated on my income taxes, but everyone else does, so why shouldn't I?
Stacking the deck
Giving a slanted view of the issue by focusing only on one side.
Example: I deserve to get an A in the class because I like the teacher, work hard, and attend class.
Appeal to Emotion
Exploiting the audience's feeling in order to get them on your side.
Example: I believe I deserve a scholarship because I am an orphan who grew up in a dysfunctional
foster family.
Ignoring the question
Changing the topic before it is really considered
Example: The criminal won't say where he was on the night of the crime, but he does remember
being teased relentlessly as a child.
Trivial objections
Can be similar to ad hominem in that it focuses on things unimportant to the issue at hand.
Example: I think Ross Perot would make a terrible president. His ears are huge.
The following appeared in a recommendation from the president of Amburg's Chamber of Commerce
"Last October the city of Belleville installed high intensity lighting in its central business district,
and vandalism there declined almost immediately. The city of Amburg has recently begun
police patrols on bicycles in its business district but the rate of vandalism there remains
constant. Since high intensity lighting is apparently the most effective way to combat crime, we
should install such lighting throughout Amburg. By reducing crime in this way, we can revitalize
the declining neighborhoods in our city."
Amburg's Chamber-of-Commerce president has recommended high-intensity lighting
throughout Amburg as the best means of reducing crime and revitnliT, ing city neighbor hoods.
In support of this recommendation the president points out that when Belleville took similar
action vandalism declined there almost immediately. The president also points out that since
Amburg's police began patrolling on bicycles the incidence of vandalism has remained
unchanged. The president's argument is flawed in several critical respects.
First, the argument rests on the unsupported assumption that in BeUeviUe the immediate
decline in vandalism was attributable to the lighting--rather than to some other
phenomenon-and that the lighting has continued to serve as an effective deterrent there.
Perhaps around the same time the city added police units or more after-school youth programs.
Moreover, perhaps since the initial decline vandals have grown accustomed to the lighting and
are no longer deterred by it. Without ruling out other feasible explanations for the decline and
showing that the decline was a lasting one, the president cannot reasonably conclude on the
basis of BelleviUe's experience that the same course of action would serve Amburg's
objectives.
Secondly, the president assumes too hastily that Amburg's bicycle patrol has been
ineffective in deterring vandalism. Perhaps other factors--such as a demographic shift or
worsening economic conditions--have served to increase vandalism while the bicycle patrol
has offset that increase. Thus without showing that all other conditions affecting the incidence
of vandalism have remained unchanged since the police began its bicycle patrol the president
cannot convincingly condude that high-intensity lighting would be a more effective means of preventing vandalism.
Thirdly, the president falsely assumes that high-intensity lighting and bicycle patrolling are Amburg's only possible means of reducing crime. In all likelihood Amburg has a myriad of other choices--such as social programs and juvenile legal-system reforms, to name just a few. Moreover, undoubtedly vandalism is not the only type of crime in Amburg. Thus unless the president can show that high-intensity lighting will deter other types of crime as well I cannot take seriously the president's conclusion that installing high intensity lighting would be the best way for Amburg to reduce its overall crime rate.
Finally, even if high-intensity lighting would be Amburg's best means of reducing crime in its
central business district, the president's further assertion that reducing crime would result in a
revitalization of city neighborhoods is unwarranted. Perhaps the decline of Amburg's city
neighborhoods is attributable not to the crime rate in Amburg's central business district but
rather to other factors--such as the availability of more attractive housing in the suburbs. And if
the neighborhoods in decline are not located within the central business district the president's
argument is even weaker.
In sum, the recommendation is not well-supported. To bolster it the president must show that
BeUeville's decline in vandalism is lasting and is attributable to the lighting. The president must
also show that lighting would be more effective than any other means at Amburg's disposal to
reduce not just vandalism but other crimes as well. To better assess the recommendation I
would need to know whether Amburg's declining city neighbor-hoods are located within the
central business district, and whether any other factors might have contributed to the decline.
and vandalism there declined almost immediately. The city of Amburg has recently begun
police patrols on bicycles in its business district but the rate of vandalism there remains
constant. Since high intensity lighting is apparently the most effective way to combat crime, we
should install such lighting throughout Amburg. By reducing crime in this way, we can revitalize
the declining neighborhoods in our city."
Amburg's Chamber-of-Commerce president has recommended high-intensity lighting
throughout Amburg as the best means of reducing crime and revitnliT, ing city neighbor hoods.
In support of this recommendation the president points out that when Belleville took similar
action vandalism declined there almost immediately. The president also points out that since
Amburg's police began patrolling on bicycles the incidence of vandalism has remained
unchanged. The president's argument is flawed in several critical respects.
First, the argument rests on the unsupported assumption that in BeUeviUe the immediate
decline in vandalism was attributable to the lighting--rather than to some other
phenomenon-and that the lighting has continued to serve as an effective deterrent there.
Perhaps around the same time the city added police units or more after-school youth programs.
Moreover, perhaps since the initial decline vandals have grown accustomed to the lighting and
are no longer deterred by it. Without ruling out other feasible explanations for the decline and
showing that the decline was a lasting one, the president cannot reasonably conclude on the
basis of BelleviUe's experience that the same course of action would serve Amburg's
objectives.
Secondly, the president assumes too hastily that Amburg's bicycle patrol has been
ineffective in deterring vandalism. Perhaps other factors--such as a demographic shift or
worsening economic conditions--have served to increase vandalism while the bicycle patrol
has offset that increase. Thus without showing that all other conditions affecting the incidence
of vandalism have remained unchanged since the police began its bicycle patrol the president
cannot convincingly condude that high-intensity lighting would be a more effective means of preventing vandalism.
Thirdly, the president falsely assumes that high-intensity lighting and bicycle patrolling are Amburg's only possible means of reducing crime. In all likelihood Amburg has a myriad of other choices--such as social programs and juvenile legal-system reforms, to name just a few. Moreover, undoubtedly vandalism is not the only type of crime in Amburg. Thus unless the president can show that high-intensity lighting will deter other types of crime as well I cannot take seriously the president's conclusion that installing high intensity lighting would be the best way for Amburg to reduce its overall crime rate.
Finally, even if high-intensity lighting would be Amburg's best means of reducing crime in its
central business district, the president's further assertion that reducing crime would result in a
revitalization of city neighborhoods is unwarranted. Perhaps the decline of Amburg's city
neighborhoods is attributable not to the crime rate in Amburg's central business district but
rather to other factors--such as the availability of more attractive housing in the suburbs. And if
the neighborhoods in decline are not located within the central business district the president's
argument is even weaker.
In sum, the recommendation is not well-supported. To bolster it the president must show that
BeUeville's decline in vandalism is lasting and is attributable to the lighting. The president must
also show that lighting would be more effective than any other means at Amburg's disposal to
reduce not just vandalism but other crimes as well. To better assess the recommendation I
would need to know whether Amburg's declining city neighbor-hoods are located within the
central business district, and whether any other factors might have contributed to the decline.
Rockingham's century-old town hall should be torn down and replaced by the larger and more energy-efficient building
The following is taken from the editorial section of the local newspaper in Rockingham.
"In order to save a considerable amount of money, Rockingham's century-old town hall should be torn down and replaced by the larger and more energy-efficient building that some citizens have proposed. The old town hall is too small to comfortably accommodate the number of people who are employed by the town. In addition, it is very costly to heat the old hall in winter and cool it in summer. The new, larger building would be more energy efficient, costing less per square foot to heat and cool than the old hall. Furthermore, it would be possible to rent out some of the space in the new building, thereby generating income for the town of Rockingham."
This editorial condudes that the town of Rockingham would save money by replacing its old
town hall with a larger, more energy-efficient one. To support the argument the editorial's
author cites the need for a larger building to comfortably accommodate employees, and the
fact that the proposed building would cost less per cubic foot to heat and cool than the current
building would. However, the editorial is unconvincing for several reasons.
First of all, even though it would cost less per cubic foot to heat and cool the new building,
because the new building would be larger the total cooling and heating costs might actually be
greater than they are now. Add to this possibility the initial cost of replacing the structure, and
in all likelihood the new building would not save money for the town. Besides, the argument
ignores other, potentially less expensive, means of reducing current heating and cooling costs--for example, retrofitting the building with a new climate control system.
Secondly, the editorial relies partly on the fact that the current building cannot comfortably
accommodate all the people who work in it. However, this fact in itself is irrelevant to whether
the town would save money by replacing the building. Besides, the editorial ignores other,
potentially less expensive, solutions to the current comfort problem--for example, adding an
annex to the current structure.
Thirdly, the editorial relies partly on the assertion that the town could generate income by
renting out part of a larger new building. However, the author equivocates here--on the one
hand claiming that a larger building is needed because the old one is too small to
accommodate employees, while on the other hand proposing that the additional space not be
used to solve this problem. The use of conflicting evidence to support the same conclusion
renders the argument wholly unpersuasive.
In conclusion, the editorial is unconvincing as it stands. To strengthen the assertion that a
new building would save the town money, the editorial's author must provide a detailed
analysis comparing the cost of cooling and heating the current hall to the anticipated cost of
cooling and heating the new hall. In this analysis, the author must factor in the initial cost of
replacing the old hall, as well as the additional rental income that the larger hall might generate.
Finally, the author must choose between two competing objectives: creating a more spacious
environment for current employees or creating a larger hall for the purpose of generating rental
income.
"In order to save a considerable amount of money, Rockingham's century-old town hall should be torn down and replaced by the larger and more energy-efficient building that some citizens have proposed. The old town hall is too small to comfortably accommodate the number of people who are employed by the town. In addition, it is very costly to heat the old hall in winter and cool it in summer. The new, larger building would be more energy efficient, costing less per square foot to heat and cool than the old hall. Furthermore, it would be possible to rent out some of the space in the new building, thereby generating income for the town of Rockingham."
This editorial condudes that the town of Rockingham would save money by replacing its old
town hall with a larger, more energy-efficient one. To support the argument the editorial's
author cites the need for a larger building to comfortably accommodate employees, and the
fact that the proposed building would cost less per cubic foot to heat and cool than the current
building would. However, the editorial is unconvincing for several reasons.
First of all, even though it would cost less per cubic foot to heat and cool the new building,
because the new building would be larger the total cooling and heating costs might actually be
greater than they are now. Add to this possibility the initial cost of replacing the structure, and
in all likelihood the new building would not save money for the town. Besides, the argument
ignores other, potentially less expensive, means of reducing current heating and cooling costs--for example, retrofitting the building with a new climate control system.
Secondly, the editorial relies partly on the fact that the current building cannot comfortably
accommodate all the people who work in it. However, this fact in itself is irrelevant to whether
the town would save money by replacing the building. Besides, the editorial ignores other,
potentially less expensive, solutions to the current comfort problem--for example, adding an
annex to the current structure.
Thirdly, the editorial relies partly on the assertion that the town could generate income by
renting out part of a larger new building. However, the author equivocates here--on the one
hand claiming that a larger building is needed because the old one is too small to
accommodate employees, while on the other hand proposing that the additional space not be
used to solve this problem. The use of conflicting evidence to support the same conclusion
renders the argument wholly unpersuasive.
In conclusion, the editorial is unconvincing as it stands. To strengthen the assertion that a
new building would save the town money, the editorial's author must provide a detailed
analysis comparing the cost of cooling and heating the current hall to the anticipated cost of
cooling and heating the new hall. In this analysis, the author must factor in the initial cost of
replacing the old hall, as well as the additional rental income that the larger hall might generate.
Finally, the author must choose between two competing objectives: creating a more spacious
environment for current employees or creating a larger hall for the purpose of generating rental
income.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
One of the greatest challenges facing medical students today
One of the greatest challenges facing medical students today, apart from absorbing volumes of technical information and learning habits of scientific thought, is that of remaining empathetic to the needs of patients in the face of all this rigorous training. Requiring students to immerse themselves completely in medical coursework risks disconnecting them from the personal and ethical aspects of doctoring, and such strictly scientific thinking is insufficient for grappling with modern ethical dilemmas. For these reasons, aspiring physicians need to develop new ways of thinking about and interacting with patients. Training in ethics that takes narrative literature as its primary subject is one method of accomplishing this.
Although training in ethics is currently provided by medical schools, this training relies heavily on an abstract, philosophical view of ethics. Although the conceptual clarity provided by a traditional ethics course can be valuable, theorizing about ethics contributes little to the understanding of everyday human experience or to preparing medical students for the multifarious ethical dilemmas they will face as physicians. A true foundation in ethics must be predicated on an understanding of human behavior that reflects a wide array of relationships and readily adapts to various perspectives, for this is what is required to develop empathy. Ethics courses drawing on narrative literature can better help students prepare for ethical dilemmas precisely because such literature attaches its readers so forcefully to the concrete and varied would of human events.
The act of reading narrative literature is uniquely suited to the development of what might be called flexible ethical thinking. To grasp the development of character, to tangle with heightening moral crises, and to engage oneself with the story not as one’s own but nevertheless as something recognizable and worthy of attention, readers must use their moral imagination. Giving oneself over to the ethical conflicts in a story requires the abandonment of strictly absolute, inviolate sets of moral principles. Reading literature also demands that the reader adopt another person’s point of view –that of the narrator or a character in a story—and thus requires the ability to depart from one’s personal ethical stance and examine moral issues from new perspectives.
It does not follow that readers, including medical professionals, must relinquish all moral principles, as is the case with situational ethics, in which decisions about ethical choices are made on the basis of intuition ad are entirely relative to the circumstances in which they arise. Such an extremely relativistic stance would have as little benefit for the patient or physician as would a dogmatically absolutist one. Fortunately, the incorporation of narrative literature into the study of ethics, while serving as a corrective to the later stance, need not lead to the former. But it can give us something that is lacking in the traditional philosophical study of ethics—namely, a deeper understanding of human nature that can serve as a foundation for ethical reasoning and allow greater flexibility in the application of moral principles.
Although training in ethics is currently provided by medical schools, this training relies heavily on an abstract, philosophical view of ethics. Although the conceptual clarity provided by a traditional ethics course can be valuable, theorizing about ethics contributes little to the understanding of everyday human experience or to preparing medical students for the multifarious ethical dilemmas they will face as physicians. A true foundation in ethics must be predicated on an understanding of human behavior that reflects a wide array of relationships and readily adapts to various perspectives, for this is what is required to develop empathy. Ethics courses drawing on narrative literature can better help students prepare for ethical dilemmas precisely because such literature attaches its readers so forcefully to the concrete and varied would of human events.
The act of reading narrative literature is uniquely suited to the development of what might be called flexible ethical thinking. To grasp the development of character, to tangle with heightening moral crises, and to engage oneself with the story not as one’s own but nevertheless as something recognizable and worthy of attention, readers must use their moral imagination. Giving oneself over to the ethical conflicts in a story requires the abandonment of strictly absolute, inviolate sets of moral principles. Reading literature also demands that the reader adopt another person’s point of view –that of the narrator or a character in a story—and thus requires the ability to depart from one’s personal ethical stance and examine moral issues from new perspectives.
It does not follow that readers, including medical professionals, must relinquish all moral principles, as is the case with situational ethics, in which decisions about ethical choices are made on the basis of intuition ad are entirely relative to the circumstances in which they arise. Such an extremely relativistic stance would have as little benefit for the patient or physician as would a dogmatically absolutist one. Fortunately, the incorporation of narrative literature into the study of ethics, while serving as a corrective to the later stance, need not lead to the former. But it can give us something that is lacking in the traditional philosophical study of ethics—namely, a deeper understanding of human nature that can serve as a foundation for ethical reasoning and allow greater flexibility in the application of moral principles.
The foundations of historical sociology
In explaining the foundations of the discipline known as historical sociology—the examination of history using the methods of sociology—historical sociologist Philip Abrams argues that, while people are made by society as much as society is made by people, sociologists’ approach to the subject is usually to focus on only one of these forms of influence to the exclusion of the other. Abrams insists on the necessity for sociologists to move beyond these one-sided approaches to understand society as an entity constructed by individuals who are at the same time constructed by their society. Abrams refers to this continuous process as “structuring”.
Abrams also sees history as the result of structuring. People, both individually and as members of collectives, make history. But our making of history is itself formed and informed not only by the historical conditions we inherit from the past, but also by the prior formation of our own identities and capacities, which are shaped by what Abrams calls “contingencies”—social phenomena over which we have varying degrees of control. Contingencies include such things as the social conditions under which we come of age, the condition of our household’s economy, the ideologies available to help us make sense of our situation, and accidental circumstances. The ways in which contingencies affect our individual or group identities create a structure of forces within which we are able to act, and that partially determines the sorts of actions we are able to perform.
In Abrams analysis, historical structuring, like social structuring, is manifold and unremitting. To understand it, historical sociologists must extract from it certain significant episodes, or events, that their methodology can then analyze and interpret. According to Abrams, these events are points at which action and contingency meet, points that represent a cross section of the specific social and individual forces in play at a given time. At such moments, individuals stand forth as agents of history not simply because they possess a unique ability to act, but also because in them we see the force of the specific social conditions that allowed their actions to come forth. Individuals can “make their mark” on history, yet in individuals one also finds the convergence of wider social forces. In order to capture the various facets of this mutual interaction, Abrams recommends a fourfold structure to which he believes the investigations of historical sociologists should conform: first, description of the event itself; second, discussion of the social context that helped bring the event about and gave it significance; third, summary of the life history of the individual agent in the event; and fourth, analysis of the consequences of the event both for history and for the individual.
Abrams also sees history as the result of structuring. People, both individually and as members of collectives, make history. But our making of history is itself formed and informed not only by the historical conditions we inherit from the past, but also by the prior formation of our own identities and capacities, which are shaped by what Abrams calls “contingencies”—social phenomena over which we have varying degrees of control. Contingencies include such things as the social conditions under which we come of age, the condition of our household’s economy, the ideologies available to help us make sense of our situation, and accidental circumstances. The ways in which contingencies affect our individual or group identities create a structure of forces within which we are able to act, and that partially determines the sorts of actions we are able to perform.
In Abrams analysis, historical structuring, like social structuring, is manifold and unremitting. To understand it, historical sociologists must extract from it certain significant episodes, or events, that their methodology can then analyze and interpret. According to Abrams, these events are points at which action and contingency meet, points that represent a cross section of the specific social and individual forces in play at a given time. At such moments, individuals stand forth as agents of history not simply because they possess a unique ability to act, but also because in them we see the force of the specific social conditions that allowed their actions to come forth. Individuals can “make their mark” on history, yet in individuals one also finds the convergence of wider social forces. In order to capture the various facets of this mutual interaction, Abrams recommends a fourfold structure to which he believes the investigations of historical sociologists should conform: first, description of the event itself; second, discussion of the social context that helped bring the event about and gave it significance; third, summary of the life history of the individual agent in the event; and fourth, analysis of the consequences of the event both for history and for the individual.
Intellectual authority
Intellectual authority is defined as the authority of arguments that prevail by virtue of good reasoning and do not depend on coercion or convention. A contrasting notion, institutional authority, refers to the power of social institutions to enforce acceptance of arguments that may or may not possess intellectual authority. The authority wielded by legal systems is especially interesting because such systems are institutions that nonetheless aspire to a purely intellectual authority. One judge goes so far as to claim that courts are merely passive vehicles for applying the intellectual authority of the law and possess no coercive powers of their own.
In contrast, some critics maintain that whatever authority judicial pronouncements have is exclusively institutional. Some of these critics go further, claiming that intellectual authority does not really exist—i.e., it reduces to institutional authority. But it can be countered that these claims break down when a sufficiently broad historical perspective is taken: Not all arguments accepted by institutions withstand the test of time, and some well-reasoned arguments never receive institutional imprimatur. The reasonable argument that goes unrecognized in its own time because it challenges institutional beliefs is common in intellectual history; intellectual authority and institutional consensus are not the same thing.
But the critics might respond, intellectual authority is only recognized as such because of institutional consensus. For example, if a musicologist were to claim that an alleged musical genius who, after several decades, had not gained respect and recognition for his or her compositions is probably not a genius, the critics might say that basing a judgment on a unit of time—“several decades”—is an institutional rather than an intellectual construct. What, the critics might ask, makes a particular number of decades reasonable evidence by which to judge genius? The answer, of course, is nothing, except for the fact that such institutional procedures have proved useful to musicologists in making such distinctions in the past.
The analogous legal concept is the doctrine of precedent, i.e., a judge’s merely deciding a case a certain way becoming a basis for deciding later cases the same way—a pure example of institutional authority. But eh critics miss the crucial distinction that when a judicial decision is badly reasoned, or simply no longer applies in the face of evolving social standards or practices, the notion of intellectual authority is introduced: judges reconsider, revise, or in some cases throw out in the reconsideration of decisions, leading one to draw the conclusion that legal systems contain a significant degree of intellectual authority even if the thrust of their power is predominantly institutional.
In contrast, some critics maintain that whatever authority judicial pronouncements have is exclusively institutional. Some of these critics go further, claiming that intellectual authority does not really exist—i.e., it reduces to institutional authority. But it can be countered that these claims break down when a sufficiently broad historical perspective is taken: Not all arguments accepted by institutions withstand the test of time, and some well-reasoned arguments never receive institutional imprimatur. The reasonable argument that goes unrecognized in its own time because it challenges institutional beliefs is common in intellectual history; intellectual authority and institutional consensus are not the same thing.
But the critics might respond, intellectual authority is only recognized as such because of institutional consensus. For example, if a musicologist were to claim that an alleged musical genius who, after several decades, had not gained respect and recognition for his or her compositions is probably not a genius, the critics might say that basing a judgment on a unit of time—“several decades”—is an institutional rather than an intellectual construct. What, the critics might ask, makes a particular number of decades reasonable evidence by which to judge genius? The answer, of course, is nothing, except for the fact that such institutional procedures have proved useful to musicologists in making such distinctions in the past.
The analogous legal concept is the doctrine of precedent, i.e., a judge’s merely deciding a case a certain way becoming a basis for deciding later cases the same way—a pure example of institutional authority. But eh critics miss the crucial distinction that when a judicial decision is badly reasoned, or simply no longer applies in the face of evolving social standards or practices, the notion of intellectual authority is introduced: judges reconsider, revise, or in some cases throw out in the reconsideration of decisions, leading one to draw the conclusion that legal systems contain a significant degree of intellectual authority even if the thrust of their power is predominantly institutional.
The myth in 1942
The myth persists that in 1492 the Western Hemisphere was an untamed wilderness and that it was European settlers who harnessed and transformed its ecosystems. But scholarship shows that forests, in particular, had been altered to varying degrees well before the arrival of Europeans. Native populations had converted much of the forests to successfully cultivated stands, especially by means of burning. Nevertheless, some researchers have maintained that the extent, frequency, and impact of such burning was minimal. One geographer claims that climatic change could have accounted for some of the changes in forest composition; another argues that burning by native populations was done only sporadically, to augment the effects of natural fires.
However, a large body of evidence for the routine practice of burning exists in the geographical record. One group of researchers found, for example, that sedimentary charcoal accumulations in what is now the northeastern United States are greatest where known native American settlements were greatest. Other evidence shows that, while the characteristics and impact of fires set by native populations varied regionally according to population size, extent of resource management techniques, and environment, all such fires had markedly different effects on vegetation patter than did natural fires. Controlled burning crated grassy openings such as meadows and glades. Burning also promoted a mosaic quality to North and south American ecosystems, creating forests in many different stages of ecological development. Much of the mature forestland was characterized by open herbaceous undergrowth, another result of the clearing brought about by burning.
In North American, controlled burning crated conditions favorable to berries and other fire-tolerant and sun-loving foods. Burning also converted mixed stands of trees to homogeneous forest, for example the longleaf, slash pine, and scrub oak forests of the southeastern U.S. natural fires do account for some of this vegetation, but regular burning clearly extended and maintained it. Burning also influenced forest composition in the tropics, where natural fires are rare. An example is the pine-dominant forests of Nicaragua, where warm temperatures and heavy rainfall naturally favor mixed tropical or rain forests. While there are primarily grow in cooler, drier, higher elevations, regions where such vegetation is in large part natural and even prehuman. Today, the Nicaraguan pines occur where there has been clearing followed by regular burning, and the same is likely to have occurred in the past: such forests ere present when Europeans arrived and were found only in areas where native settlements were substantial; when these settlements were abandoned, the land returned to mixed hardwoods. This succession is also evident elsewhere in similar low tropical elevations in the Caribbean and Mexico.
However, a large body of evidence for the routine practice of burning exists in the geographical record. One group of researchers found, for example, that sedimentary charcoal accumulations in what is now the northeastern United States are greatest where known native American settlements were greatest. Other evidence shows that, while the characteristics and impact of fires set by native populations varied regionally according to population size, extent of resource management techniques, and environment, all such fires had markedly different effects on vegetation patter than did natural fires. Controlled burning crated grassy openings such as meadows and glades. Burning also promoted a mosaic quality to North and south American ecosystems, creating forests in many different stages of ecological development. Much of the mature forestland was characterized by open herbaceous undergrowth, another result of the clearing brought about by burning.
In North American, controlled burning crated conditions favorable to berries and other fire-tolerant and sun-loving foods. Burning also converted mixed stands of trees to homogeneous forest, for example the longleaf, slash pine, and scrub oak forests of the southeastern U.S. natural fires do account for some of this vegetation, but regular burning clearly extended and maintained it. Burning also influenced forest composition in the tropics, where natural fires are rare. An example is the pine-dominant forests of Nicaragua, where warm temperatures and heavy rainfall naturally favor mixed tropical or rain forests. While there are primarily grow in cooler, drier, higher elevations, regions where such vegetation is in large part natural and even prehuman. Today, the Nicaraguan pines occur where there has been clearing followed by regular burning, and the same is likely to have occurred in the past: such forests ere present when Europeans arrived and were found only in areas where native settlements were substantial; when these settlements were abandoned, the land returned to mixed hardwoods. This succession is also evident elsewhere in similar low tropical elevations in the Caribbean and Mexico.
Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson was referring to the liberal idea of the economic market when he said that the free enterprise system is the most efficient economic system. Maximum freedom means maximum productiveness; our “openness” is to be the measure of our stability. Fascination with this ideal has made Americans defy the “Old World” categories of settled possessiveness versus unsettling deprivation, the cupidity of retention versus the cupidity of seizure, a “status quo” defended or attacked. The United States, it was believed, had no status quo ante. Our only “station” was the turning of a stationary wheel, spinning faster and faster. We did not base our system on property but opportunity—which meant we based it not on stability but on mobility. The more things changed, that is, the more rapidly the wheel turned, the steadier we would be. The conventional picture of class politics is composed of the Haves, who want a stability to keep what they have, and the Have-Nots, who want a touch of instability and change in which to scramble for the things they have not. But Americans imagined a condition in which speculators, self-makers, runners are always using the new opportunities given by our land. These economic leaders (front-runners) would thus be mainly agents of change. The nonstarters were considered the ones who wanted stability, a strong referee to give them some position in the race, a regulative hand to calm manic speculation; an authority that can call things to a halt, begin things again from compensatorily staggered “starting lines.”
“Reform” in America has been sterile because it can imagine no change except through the extension of this metaphor of a race, wider inclusion of competitors, “a piece of the action,” as it were, for the disenfranchised. There is no attempt to call off the race. Since our only stability is change, America seems not to honor the quiet work that achieves social interdependence and stability. There is, in our legends, no heroism of the office clerk, no stable industrial work force of the people who actually make the system work. There is no pride in being an employee (Wilson asked for a return to the time when everyone was an employer). There has been no boasting about our social workers—they are merely signs of the system’s failure, of opportunity denied or not taken, of things to be eliminated. We have no pride in our growing interdependence, in the fact that our system can serve others, that we are able to help those in need; empty boasts from the past make us ashamed of our present achievements, make us try to forget or deny them, move away from them. There is no honor but in the Wonderland race we must all run, all trying to win, none winning in the end (for there is no end).
“Reform” in America has been sterile because it can imagine no change except through the extension of this metaphor of a race, wider inclusion of competitors, “a piece of the action,” as it were, for the disenfranchised. There is no attempt to call off the race. Since our only stability is change, America seems not to honor the quiet work that achieves social interdependence and stability. There is, in our legends, no heroism of the office clerk, no stable industrial work force of the people who actually make the system work. There is no pride in being an employee (Wilson asked for a return to the time when everyone was an employer). There has been no boasting about our social workers—they are merely signs of the system’s failure, of opportunity denied or not taken, of things to be eliminated. We have no pride in our growing interdependence, in the fact that our system can serve others, that we are able to help those in need; empty boasts from the past make us ashamed of our present achievements, make us try to forget or deny them, move away from them. There is no honor but in the Wonderland race we must all run, all trying to win, none winning in the end (for there is no end).
Martin Luther King Address
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."1
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."2
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."1
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."2
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
An application for a small business loan by a group of
"A jazz music club in Monroe would be a tremendously profitable enterprise. Currently, the
nearest jazz club is 65 miles away; thus, our proposed club, the C Note, would have the local
market all to itself. Plus, jazz is extremely popular in Monroe: over 100,000 people attended
Monroe's jazz festival last summer, several well-known jazz musicians live in Monroe, and the
highest-rated radio program in Monroe is 'Jazz Nightly,' which airs every weeknight. Finally, a
nationwide study indicates that the typical jazz fan spends close to $1,000 per year on jazz
entertainment. It is clear that the C Note cannot help but make money."
This loan applicant claims that a jazz club in Monroe would be a profitable venture. To
support this claim the applicant points out that Monroe has no other jazz clubs. He also cites
various other evidence that jazz is popular among Monroe residents. Careful examination of
this supporting evidence, however, reveals that it lends little credible support to the applicant's claim.
First of all, if the demand for a live jazz club in Monroe were as great as the applicant claims,
it seems that Monroe would already have one or more such clubs. The fact that the closest
jazz club is 65 miles away suggests a lack of interest among Monroe residents in a local jazz
club. Since the applicant has not adequately responded to this concem, his claim that the
proposed club would be profitable is untenable.
The popularity of Monroe's annual jazz festival and of its nightly jazz radio show might
appear to lend support to the applicant's claim. However, it is entirely possible that the vast
majority of festival attendees are out-of-town visitors. Moreover, the author provides no
evidence that radio listeners would be interested in going out to hear live jazz. For that matter,
the radio program might actually pose competition for the C-Note club, especially considering
that the program airs during the evening.
Nor does the mere fact that several weU-known jazz musicians live in Monroe lend
significant support to the applicant's claim. It is entirely possible that these musicians perform
elsewhere, perhaps at the club located 65 miles away. This would go a long way toward
explaining why Monroe does not currently have a jazz club, and it would weaken the
applicant's assertion that the C-Note would be profitable.
Finally, the nationwide study showing that the average jazz fan spends $1,000 each year on
jazz entertainment would lend support to the applicant's claim only if Monroe residents typify
jazz fans nationwide. However, the applicant provides no credible evidence that this is the
case.
In conclusion, the loan applicant's argument is not persuasive. To bolster it he must provide
clearer evidence that Monroe residents would patronize the C-Note on a regular basis. Such
evidence might include the following: statistics showing that a significant number of Monroe
residents attend the jazz festival each year; a survey showing that fans of Monroe's jazz radio
program would go out to hear live jazz if they had the chance; and assurances from
well-known local jazz musicians that they would play at the C-Note if given the opportunity.
nearest jazz club is 65 miles away; thus, our proposed club, the C Note, would have the local
market all to itself. Plus, jazz is extremely popular in Monroe: over 100,000 people attended
Monroe's jazz festival last summer, several well-known jazz musicians live in Monroe, and the
highest-rated radio program in Monroe is 'Jazz Nightly,' which airs every weeknight. Finally, a
nationwide study indicates that the typical jazz fan spends close to $1,000 per year on jazz
entertainment. It is clear that the C Note cannot help but make money."
This loan applicant claims that a jazz club in Monroe would be a profitable venture. To
support this claim the applicant points out that Monroe has no other jazz clubs. He also cites
various other evidence that jazz is popular among Monroe residents. Careful examination of
this supporting evidence, however, reveals that it lends little credible support to the applicant's claim.
First of all, if the demand for a live jazz club in Monroe were as great as the applicant claims,
it seems that Monroe would already have one or more such clubs. The fact that the closest
jazz club is 65 miles away suggests a lack of interest among Monroe residents in a local jazz
club. Since the applicant has not adequately responded to this concem, his claim that the
proposed club would be profitable is untenable.
The popularity of Monroe's annual jazz festival and of its nightly jazz radio show might
appear to lend support to the applicant's claim. However, it is entirely possible that the vast
majority of festival attendees are out-of-town visitors. Moreover, the author provides no
evidence that radio listeners would be interested in going out to hear live jazz. For that matter,
the radio program might actually pose competition for the C-Note club, especially considering
that the program airs during the evening.
Nor does the mere fact that several weU-known jazz musicians live in Monroe lend
significant support to the applicant's claim. It is entirely possible that these musicians perform
elsewhere, perhaps at the club located 65 miles away. This would go a long way toward
explaining why Monroe does not currently have a jazz club, and it would weaken the
applicant's assertion that the C-Note would be profitable.
Finally, the nationwide study showing that the average jazz fan spends $1,000 each year on
jazz entertainment would lend support to the applicant's claim only if Monroe residents typify
jazz fans nationwide. However, the applicant provides no credible evidence that this is the
case.
In conclusion, the loan applicant's argument is not persuasive. To bolster it he must provide
clearer evidence that Monroe residents would patronize the C-Note on a regular basis. Such
evidence might include the following: statistics showing that a significant number of Monroe
residents attend the jazz festival each year; a survey showing that fans of Monroe's jazz radio
program would go out to hear live jazz if they had the chance; and assurances from
well-known local jazz musicians that they would play at the C-Note if given the opportunity.
Scandals---whether in politics, academia, or other areas---can be useful
Are scandals useful in calling our attention to important problems, as this statement
suggests? I agree that in many cases scandals can serve to reveal larger problems that a
community or society should address. On the other hand, scandals can sometimes distract us
from more important societal issues.
On the one hand, scandals can sometimes serve to call our attention to pervasive social or
political problems that we would otherwise neglect. Perhaps the paradigmatic modern example
is the Watergate scandal. Early in that scandal it would have been tempting to dismiss it as
involving one isolated incidence of underhanded campaign tactics. But, in retrospect the
scandal forever increased the level of scrutiny and accountability to which our public officials
are held, thereby working a significant and lasting benefit to our society. More recently, the
Clinton-Gore fundraising scandal sparked a renewed call for campaign-finance reform. In fact
the scandal might result in the passage of a congressional bill outlawing private campaign
contributions altogether, thereby rendering presidential candidates far less susceptible to
undue influence of special-interest groups. Our society would be the dear beneficiary of such
reform. Surely, no public speaker or reformer could have called our nation's collective attention
to the problem of presidential misconduct unless these two scandals had surfaced.
On the other hand, scandals can sometimes serve chiefly to distract us from more pressing
community or societal problems. At the community level, for example, several years ago the
chancellor of a university located in my city was expelled from office for misusing university
funds to renovate his posh personal residence. Every new development during the scandal
became front-page news in the campus newspaper. But did this scandal serve any useful
purpose? No. The scandal did not reveal any pervasive problem with university accounting
practices. It did not result in any sort of useful system-wide reform. Rather, it was merely one
incidence of petty misappropriation. Moreover, the scandal distracted the university community
from far more important issues, such as affu'mative action and campus safety, which were
relegated to the second page of the campus news paper during the scandal.
Even on a societal level, scandals can serve chiefly to distract us from more important
matters. For example, time will tell whether the Clinton sex scandal will benefit our political,
social, or legal system. Admittedly, the scandal did call our attention to certain issues of federal
law. It sparked a debate about the powers and duties of legal prosecutors, under the
Independent Counsel Act, vis-i-vis the chief executive while in and out of office. And the
various court rulings about executive privilege and immunity WIU serve useful legal
precedents for the furore. Even the impeachment proceedings xxhll no doubt provide useful
procedural precedent at some future time. Yet on balance, it seems to me that the deleterious
effects of the scandal in terms of the financial expense to taxpayers and the various harms to
the many individuals caught up in the legal process---outweigh these benefits. More
importantly, for more that a year the scandal served chiefly to distract us from our most
pressing national and global problems, such as the Kosovo crisis, our social-security crisis,
and health-care reform, to name just a few.
In sum, I agree that scandals often serve to flag important socio-political problems more
effectively than any speaker or reformer can. However, whether a scandal works more benefit
than harm to a community or society must be addressed on a case-by-case basis.
"Scandals---whether in politics, academia, or other areas---can be useful. They focus our attention on problems in ways that no speaker or reformer ever could."
suggests? I agree that in many cases scandals can serve to reveal larger problems that a
community or society should address. On the other hand, scandals can sometimes distract us
from more important societal issues.
On the one hand, scandals can sometimes serve to call our attention to pervasive social or
political problems that we would otherwise neglect. Perhaps the paradigmatic modern example
is the Watergate scandal. Early in that scandal it would have been tempting to dismiss it as
involving one isolated incidence of underhanded campaign tactics. But, in retrospect the
scandal forever increased the level of scrutiny and accountability to which our public officials
are held, thereby working a significant and lasting benefit to our society. More recently, the
Clinton-Gore fundraising scandal sparked a renewed call for campaign-finance reform. In fact
the scandal might result in the passage of a congressional bill outlawing private campaign
contributions altogether, thereby rendering presidential candidates far less susceptible to
undue influence of special-interest groups. Our society would be the dear beneficiary of such
reform. Surely, no public speaker or reformer could have called our nation's collective attention
to the problem of presidential misconduct unless these two scandals had surfaced.
On the other hand, scandals can sometimes serve chiefly to distract us from more pressing
community or societal problems. At the community level, for example, several years ago the
chancellor of a university located in my city was expelled from office for misusing university
funds to renovate his posh personal residence. Every new development during the scandal
became front-page news in the campus newspaper. But did this scandal serve any useful
purpose? No. The scandal did not reveal any pervasive problem with university accounting
practices. It did not result in any sort of useful system-wide reform. Rather, it was merely one
incidence of petty misappropriation. Moreover, the scandal distracted the university community
from far more important issues, such as affu'mative action and campus safety, which were
relegated to the second page of the campus news paper during the scandal.
Even on a societal level, scandals can serve chiefly to distract us from more important
matters. For example, time will tell whether the Clinton sex scandal will benefit our political,
social, or legal system. Admittedly, the scandal did call our attention to certain issues of federal
law. It sparked a debate about the powers and duties of legal prosecutors, under the
Independent Counsel Act, vis-i-vis the chief executive while in and out of office. And the
various court rulings about executive privilege and immunity WIU serve useful legal
precedents for the furore. Even the impeachment proceedings xxhll no doubt provide useful
procedural precedent at some future time. Yet on balance, it seems to me that the deleterious
effects of the scandal in terms of the financial expense to taxpayers and the various harms to
the many individuals caught up in the legal process---outweigh these benefits. More
importantly, for more that a year the scandal served chiefly to distract us from our most
pressing national and global problems, such as the Kosovo crisis, our social-security crisis,
and health-care reform, to name just a few.
In sum, I agree that scandals often serve to flag important socio-political problems more
effectively than any speaker or reformer can. However, whether a scandal works more benefit
than harm to a community or society must be addressed on a case-by-case basis.
"Scandals---whether in politics, academia, or other areas---can be useful. They focus our attention on problems in ways that no speaker or reformer ever could."
It is a grave mistake to theorize before one has data
Is it a "grave mistake" to theorize without data, as the speaker contends? I agree insofar as
to theorize before collecting sufficient data is to risk tainting the process of collecting and
interpreting further data. However, in a sense the speaker begs the question, by overlooking
the fact that every theory requires some data to begin with. Moreover, the claim unfairly
ignores equally grave consequences of waiting to theorize until we obtain too much data.
In one important respect I agree with the speaker's contention. A theory conjured up without
the benefit of data amounts to little more that the theorist's hopes and desires--what he or she
wants to be true and not be true. Accordingly, this theorist will tend to seek out evidence that
supports the theory, and overlook or avoid evidence that refutes it. One telling historical
example involves theories about the center of the Universe. Understandably, we ego-driven
humans would prefer that the universe revolve around us. Early theories presumed so for this
reason, and subsequent observations that ran contrary to this ego-driven theory were ignored,
while the observers were scorned and even vilified.
By theorizing before collecting data the theorist also runs that risk of interpreting that data in
a manner which makes it appear to lend more credence to the theory than it actually does.
Consider the theory that the Earth is flat. Any person with a clear view of the horizon must
agree in all honesty that the evidence does not support the theory. Yet prior to Newtonian
physics the notion of a spherical Earth was so unsettling to people that they interpreted the
arc-shaped horizon as evidence of a convex, yet nevertheless "flattish," Earth.
Despite the merits of the speaker's claim, I find it problematic in two crucial respects. First,
common sense informs me that it is impossible to theorize in the first place without at least
some data. How can theorizing without data be dangerous, as the speaker con tends, if it is not
even possible? While a theory based purely on fantasy might ultimately be born out by
empirical observation, it is equally possible that it won't. Thus without prior data a theory is not
worth our time or attention. Secondly, the speaker's claim overlooks the inverse problem: the
danger of continuing to acquire data without venturing a theory based on that data. To
postpone theorizing until all the data is in might be to postpone it forever. The danger lies in the
reasons we theorize and test our theories: to solve society's problems and to make the world a
better place to live. Unless we act timely based on our data we render ourselves impotent. For
example, governments tend to respond to urgent social problems by establishing agencies to
collect data and think-tanks to theorize about causes and solutions. These agencies and
think-tanks serve no purpose unless they admit that they will never have all the data and that
no theory is foolproof, and unless timely action is taken based on the best theory currendy
available--before the problem overwhelms us.
To sum up, I agree with the speaker insofar as a theory based on no data is not a theory but
mere whimsy and fancy, and insofar as by theorizing first we tend to distort the extent to which
data collected thereafter supports our own theory. Nevertheless, we put ourselves in equal
peril by mistaking data for knowledge and progress, which require us not only to theorize but
also to act upon our theories with some useful end in mind.
to theorize before collecting sufficient data is to risk tainting the process of collecting and
interpreting further data. However, in a sense the speaker begs the question, by overlooking
the fact that every theory requires some data to begin with. Moreover, the claim unfairly
ignores equally grave consequences of waiting to theorize until we obtain too much data.
In one important respect I agree with the speaker's contention. A theory conjured up without
the benefit of data amounts to little more that the theorist's hopes and desires--what he or she
wants to be true and not be true. Accordingly, this theorist will tend to seek out evidence that
supports the theory, and overlook or avoid evidence that refutes it. One telling historical
example involves theories about the center of the Universe. Understandably, we ego-driven
humans would prefer that the universe revolve around us. Early theories presumed so for this
reason, and subsequent observations that ran contrary to this ego-driven theory were ignored,
while the observers were scorned and even vilified.
By theorizing before collecting data the theorist also runs that risk of interpreting that data in
a manner which makes it appear to lend more credence to the theory than it actually does.
Consider the theory that the Earth is flat. Any person with a clear view of the horizon must
agree in all honesty that the evidence does not support the theory. Yet prior to Newtonian
physics the notion of a spherical Earth was so unsettling to people that they interpreted the
arc-shaped horizon as evidence of a convex, yet nevertheless "flattish," Earth.
Despite the merits of the speaker's claim, I find it problematic in two crucial respects. First,
common sense informs me that it is impossible to theorize in the first place without at least
some data. How can theorizing without data be dangerous, as the speaker con tends, if it is not
even possible? While a theory based purely on fantasy might ultimately be born out by
empirical observation, it is equally possible that it won't. Thus without prior data a theory is not
worth our time or attention. Secondly, the speaker's claim overlooks the inverse problem: the
danger of continuing to acquire data without venturing a theory based on that data. To
postpone theorizing until all the data is in might be to postpone it forever. The danger lies in the
reasons we theorize and test our theories: to solve society's problems and to make the world a
better place to live. Unless we act timely based on our data we render ourselves impotent. For
example, governments tend to respond to urgent social problems by establishing agencies to
collect data and think-tanks to theorize about causes and solutions. These agencies and
think-tanks serve no purpose unless they admit that they will never have all the data and that
no theory is foolproof, and unless timely action is taken based on the best theory currendy
available--before the problem overwhelms us.
To sum up, I agree with the speaker insofar as a theory based on no data is not a theory but
mere whimsy and fancy, and insofar as by theorizing first we tend to distort the extent to which
data collected thereafter supports our own theory. Nevertheless, we put ourselves in equal
peril by mistaking data for knowledge and progress, which require us not only to theorize but
also to act upon our theories with some useful end in mind.
a letter to the editor of the Balmer Island Gazette
"The population of Balmer Island increases to 100,000 duing the summer months. To reduce
the number of accidents involving mopeds and pedestrians, the town council of Balmer Island.,
should limit the number of mopeds rented by each of the island's six moped and bicycle rental
companies from 50 per day to 30 per day during the summer season. By limiting the number of
rentals, the town council is sure to attain the 50 percent reduction in moped accidents that was
achieved last year in the neighboring island of Torseau, when Torseau's town council enforced
similar limits on moped rentals."
The author of this editorial recommends that to reduce accidents involving mopeds and
pedestrians Balmer Island's city council should restrict moped rentals to 30 per day, down from
50, at each of the island's six rental outlets. To support this recommendation the author cites
the fact that last year, when nearby Torseau Island's town council enforced similar measures,
Torseau's rate of moped accidents fell by 50%. For several reasons, this evidence provides
scant support for the author's recommendation.
To begin with, the author assumes that all other conditions in Balmer that might affect the
rate of moped-pedestrian accidents will remain unchanged after the restrictions are enacted.
However, with a restricted supply of rental mopeds people in Balmer might purchase mopeds
instead. Also, the number of pedestrians might increase in the future; with more pedestrians,
especially tourists, the risk of moped-pedestrian accidents would probably increase. For that
matter, the number of rental outlets might increase to make up for the artificial supply
restriction per outlet--a likely scenario assuming moped rental demand does not decline.
Without considering and ruling out these and other possible changes that might contribute to a
high incidence of moped-pedestrian accidents, the author cannot convince me that the
proposed restrictions will necessarily have the desired effect.
Next, the author fails to consider other possible explanations for the 50% decline in
Torseau's moped accident rate last year. Perhaps last year Torseau experienced unusually fair
weather, during which moped accidents are less likely. Perhaps fewer tourists visited Tot sean
last year than during most years, thereby diminishing the demand for rental mopeds to below
the allowed limits. Perhaps last year some of Torseau's moped rental outlets purchased new
mopeds that are safer to drive. Or perhaps the restrictions were already in effect but were not
enforced until last year. In any event, a decline in Torseau's moped accident rate during only
one year is scarcely sufficient to draw any reliable conclusions about what might have caused
the decline, or about what the accident rate will be in years ahead.
Additionally, in asserting that the same phenomenon that caused a 50% decline in moped
accidents in Torseau would cause a similar decline in Balmer, the author relies on what might
amount to an unfair analogy between Balmer and Torseau. Perhaps Balmer's ability to enforce
moped-rental restrictions does not meet Torseau's ability; if not, then the mere enactment of
similar restrictions in Balmer is no guarantee of a similar result. Or perhaps the demand for
mopeds in Torseau is always greater than in Balmer. Specifically, if fewer than all available
mopeds are currently rented per day from the average Balmer outlet, while in Torseau every
available moped is rented each day, then the proposed restriction is likely to have less impact
on the accident rate in Balmer than in Torseau.
Finally, the author provides no evidence that the same restrictions that served to reduce the
incidence of all "moped accidents" by 50% would also serve to reduce the incidence of
accidents involving "mopeds and pedestrians" by 50%. Lacking such evidence, it is entirely
possible that the number of moped accidents not involving pedestrians decreased by a greater
percentage, while the number of moped-pedestrian accidents decreased by a smaller
percentage, or even increased. Since the author has not accounted for these possibilities, the
editorial's recommendation cannot be taken seriously.
In conclusion, the recommendation is not well supported. To convince me that the proposed
restriction would achieve the desired outcome, the author would have to assure me that no
changes serving to increase Balmer's moped-pedestrian accident rate will occur in the
foreseeable future. The author must also provide dear evidence that last year's decline in
moped accidents in Torseau was attributable primarily to its moped rental restrictions rather
than to one or more other factors. In order to better evaluate the recommendation, I would
need more information comparing the supply of and demand for moped rentals on the two
islands. I would also need to know the rate of mopedpedestrian accidents in Torseau both prior
to and after the restrictions were enforced in Torseau.
the number of accidents involving mopeds and pedestrians, the town council of Balmer Island.,
should limit the number of mopeds rented by each of the island's six moped and bicycle rental
companies from 50 per day to 30 per day during the summer season. By limiting the number of
rentals, the town council is sure to attain the 50 percent reduction in moped accidents that was
achieved last year in the neighboring island of Torseau, when Torseau's town council enforced
similar limits on moped rentals."
The author of this editorial recommends that to reduce accidents involving mopeds and
pedestrians Balmer Island's city council should restrict moped rentals to 30 per day, down from
50, at each of the island's six rental outlets. To support this recommendation the author cites
the fact that last year, when nearby Torseau Island's town council enforced similar measures,
Torseau's rate of moped accidents fell by 50%. For several reasons, this evidence provides
scant support for the author's recommendation.
To begin with, the author assumes that all other conditions in Balmer that might affect the
rate of moped-pedestrian accidents will remain unchanged after the restrictions are enacted.
However, with a restricted supply of rental mopeds people in Balmer might purchase mopeds
instead. Also, the number of pedestrians might increase in the future; with more pedestrians,
especially tourists, the risk of moped-pedestrian accidents would probably increase. For that
matter, the number of rental outlets might increase to make up for the artificial supply
restriction per outlet--a likely scenario assuming moped rental demand does not decline.
Without considering and ruling out these and other possible changes that might contribute to a
high incidence of moped-pedestrian accidents, the author cannot convince me that the
proposed restrictions will necessarily have the desired effect.
Next, the author fails to consider other possible explanations for the 50% decline in
Torseau's moped accident rate last year. Perhaps last year Torseau experienced unusually fair
weather, during which moped accidents are less likely. Perhaps fewer tourists visited Tot sean
last year than during most years, thereby diminishing the demand for rental mopeds to below
the allowed limits. Perhaps last year some of Torseau's moped rental outlets purchased new
mopeds that are safer to drive. Or perhaps the restrictions were already in effect but were not
enforced until last year. In any event, a decline in Torseau's moped accident rate during only
one year is scarcely sufficient to draw any reliable conclusions about what might have caused
the decline, or about what the accident rate will be in years ahead.
Additionally, in asserting that the same phenomenon that caused a 50% decline in moped
accidents in Torseau would cause a similar decline in Balmer, the author relies on what might
amount to an unfair analogy between Balmer and Torseau. Perhaps Balmer's ability to enforce
moped-rental restrictions does not meet Torseau's ability; if not, then the mere enactment of
similar restrictions in Balmer is no guarantee of a similar result. Or perhaps the demand for
mopeds in Torseau is always greater than in Balmer. Specifically, if fewer than all available
mopeds are currently rented per day from the average Balmer outlet, while in Torseau every
available moped is rented each day, then the proposed restriction is likely to have less impact
on the accident rate in Balmer than in Torseau.
Finally, the author provides no evidence that the same restrictions that served to reduce the
incidence of all "moped accidents" by 50% would also serve to reduce the incidence of
accidents involving "mopeds and pedestrians" by 50%. Lacking such evidence, it is entirely
possible that the number of moped accidents not involving pedestrians decreased by a greater
percentage, while the number of moped-pedestrian accidents decreased by a smaller
percentage, or even increased. Since the author has not accounted for these possibilities, the
editorial's recommendation cannot be taken seriously.
In conclusion, the recommendation is not well supported. To convince me that the proposed
restriction would achieve the desired outcome, the author would have to assure me that no
changes serving to increase Balmer's moped-pedestrian accident rate will occur in the
foreseeable future. The author must also provide dear evidence that last year's decline in
moped accidents in Torseau was attributable primarily to its moped rental restrictions rather
than to one or more other factors. In order to better evaluate the recommendation, I would
need more information comparing the supply of and demand for moped rentals on the two
islands. I would also need to know the rate of mopedpedestrian accidents in Torseau both prior
to and after the restrictions were enforced in Torseau.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
ASCRIBE, ATTRIBUTE, ASSIGN, IMPUTE, CREDIT
ASCRIBE, ATTRIBUTE, ASSIGN, IMPUTE, CREDIT mean to lay something to the account of a person or thing.
ASCRIBE suggests an inferring or conjecturing of cause, quality, authorship *forged paintings formerly ascribed to masters*.
ATTRIBUTE suggests less tentativeness than ASCRIBE, less definiteness than ASSIGN *attributed to Rembrandt but possibly done by an associate*.
ASSIGN implies ascribing with certainty or after deliberation *assigned the bones to the Cretaceous Period*.
IMPUTE suggests ascribing something that brings discredit by way of accusation or blame *tried to impute sinister motives to my actions*.
CREDIT implies ascribing a thing or especially an action to a person or other thing as its agent, source, or explanation *credited his teammates for his success*.
ASCRIBE suggests an inferring or conjecturing of cause, quality, authorship *forged paintings formerly ascribed to masters*.
ATTRIBUTE suggests less tentativeness than ASCRIBE, less definiteness than ASSIGN *attributed to Rembrandt but possibly done by an associate*.
ASSIGN implies ascribing with certainty or after deliberation *assigned the bones to the Cretaceous Period*.
IMPUTE suggests ascribing something that brings discredit by way of accusation or blame *tried to impute sinister motives to my actions*.
CREDIT implies ascribing a thing or especially an action to a person or other thing as its agent, source, or explanation *credited his teammates for his success*.
eur结尾表人
altruist:selflessness=connoisseur:expertise
connoisseur:art=gourmet:cuisine
connoisseur:painting,
consummate~~amateurish
credulity:dupe=discrimination:connoisseur
fawn:hauteur=selfdepreciate:swagger
fractious:umbrage=supercilious:hauteur
grandeur~~frivolous
hauteur:supercilious
hauteur~~humility
heretic:dissent=connoisseur:excel
intentionality:accidental=grandeur:mean
poseur:sincerity=recluse:gregariousness
poseur~~sincere person
raconteur:storytelling=wordsmith:writing
recluse:gregariousness=poseur:sincerity
saboteur:disrupt=apologist:defend
selflessness:altruist=expertise:connoisseur
stickler:derelict=poseur:unaffected
supercilious:hauteur
supercilious:hauteur=fractious:umbrage
wordsmith:writing=raconteur:storytelling
ingrate
: an ungrateful person
grandeur
1 : the quality or state of being grand : MAGNIFICENCE *the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome — E. A. Poe*
2 : an instance or example of grandeur
hauteur
: ARROGANCE, HAUGHTINESS
Etymology:French, from haut high — more at HAUGHTY
PROUD, ARROGANT, HAUGHTY, LORDLY, INSOLENT, OVERBEARING, SUPERCILIOUS, DISDAINFUL mean showing scorn for inferiors.
PROUD may suggest an assumed superiority or loftiness *too proud to take charity*.
ARROGANT implies a claiming for oneself of more consideration or importance than is warranted *a conceited and arrogant executive*.
HAUGHTY suggests a consciousness of superior birth or position *a haughty aristocrat*.
LORDLY implies pomposity or an arrogant display of power *a lordly condescension*.
INSOLENT implies contemptuous haughtiness *ignored by an insolent waiter*.
OVERBEARING suggests a tyrannical manner or an intolerable insolence *an overbearing supervisor*.
SUPERCILIOUS implies a cool, patronizing haughtiness *an aloof and supercilious manner*.
DISDAINFUL suggests a more active and openly scornful superciliousness *disdainful of their social inferiors*
connoisseur:art=gourmet:cuisine
connoisseur:painting,
consummate~~amateurish
credulity:dupe=discrimination:connoisseur
fawn:hauteur=selfdepreciate:swagger
fractious:umbrage=supercilious:hauteur
grandeur~~frivolous
hauteur:supercilious
hauteur~~humility
heretic:dissent=connoisseur:excel
intentionality:accidental=grandeur:mean
poseur:sincerity=recluse:gregariousness
poseur~~sincere person
raconteur:storytelling=wordsmith:writing
recluse:gregariousness=poseur:sincerity
saboteur:disrupt=apologist:defend
selflessness:altruist=expertise:connoisseur
stickler:derelict=poseur:unaffected
supercilious:hauteur
supercilious:hauteur=fractious:umbrage
wordsmith:writing=raconteur:storytelling
ingrate
: an ungrateful person
grandeur
1 : the quality or state of being grand : MAGNIFICENCE *the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome — E. A. Poe*
2 : an instance or example of grandeur
hauteur
: ARROGANCE, HAUGHTINESS
Etymology:French, from haut high — more at HAUGHTY
PROUD, ARROGANT, HAUGHTY, LORDLY, INSOLENT, OVERBEARING, SUPERCILIOUS, DISDAINFUL mean showing scorn for inferiors.
PROUD may suggest an assumed superiority or loftiness *too proud to take charity*.
ARROGANT implies a claiming for oneself of more consideration or importance than is warranted *a conceited and arrogant executive*.
HAUGHTY suggests a consciousness of superior birth or position *a haughty aristocrat*.
LORDLY implies pomposity or an arrogant display of power *a lordly condescension*.
INSOLENT implies contemptuous haughtiness *ignored by an insolent waiter*.
OVERBEARING suggests a tyrannical manner or an intolerable insolence *an overbearing supervisor*.
SUPERCILIOUS implies a cool, patronizing haughtiness *an aloof and supercilious manner*.
DISDAINFUL suggests a more active and openly scornful superciliousness *disdainful of their social inferiors*
Public figures such as actors, politicians, and athletes should expect people to be interested in their private lives.
Public figures such as actors, politicians, and athletes should expect people to be interested in their private lives. When they seek a public role, they should expect that they will lose at least some of their privacy.
This statement is fundamentally correct; public figures should indeed expect to lose their
privacy. After all, we are a society of voyeurs wishing to transform our mundane lives; and one
way to do so is to live vicariously through the experiences of others whose lives appear more
interesting than our own. Moreover, the media recognize this societal foible and exploit it at
every opportunity. Nevertheless, a more accurate statement would draw a distinction between
political figures and other public figures; the former have even less reason than the latter to
expect to be left alone, for the reason that their duty as public servants legitimizes public
scrutiny of their private lives.
The chief reason why I generally agree with the statement is that, for better or worse,
intense media attention to the lives of public figures raises a presumption in the collective mind
of the viewing or reading public that our public figures' lives are far more interesting than our
own. This presumption is understandable. After all, I think most people would agree that given
the opportunity for even fleeting fame they would embrace it without hesitation. Peering into
the private lives of those who have achieved our dreams allows us to live vicariously through
those lives.
Another reason why I generally agree with the statement has to do with the forces that
motivate the media. For the most part, the media consist of large corporations whose chief
objective is to maximize shareholder profits. In pursuit of that objective the media are simply
giving the public what they demand a voyeuristic look into the private lives of public figures.
One need look no further than a newsstand, local-television news broadcast, or talk show to
find ample evidence that this is so. For better or worse, we love to peer at people on public
pedestals, and we love to watch them fall off. The media know this all too well, and exploit our
obsession at every opportunity.
Nevertheless, the statement should be qualified in that a political figure has less reason to
expect privacy than other public figures. Why? The private affairs of public servants become
our business when those affairs adversely affect our servants' ability to serve us effectively, or
when our servants betray our trust. For example, several years ago the chancellor of a
university located in my city was expelled from office for misusing university funds to renovate
his posh personal residence. The scandal became front-page news in the campus newspaper,
and prompted a useful system-wide reform. Also consider the Clinton sex scandal, which
sparked a debate about the powers and duties of legal prosecutors vis4-vis the chief executive.
Also, the court rulings about executive privilege and immunity, and even the impeachment
proceedings, all of which resulted from the scandal, might serve as useful legal precedents for
the future.
Admittedly, intense public scrutiny of the personal lives of public figures can carry harmful
consequences, for the public figure as well as the society. For instance, the Clinton scandal
resulted in enormous financial costs to taxpayers, and it harmed many individuals caught up in
the legal process. And for more that a year the scandal served chiefly to distract us from our
most pressing national and global problems. Yet, until as a society we come to appreciate the
potentially harmful effects of our preoccupation with the lives of public figures, they can expect
to remain the cynosures of our attention.
Issue 17
"The primary goal of technological advancement should be to increase people's efficiency so
that everyone has more leisure time."
The speaker contends that technology's primary goal should be to increase our efficiency for
the purpose of affording us more leisure time. I concede that technology has enhanced our
efficiency as we go about our everyday lives. Productivity software helps us plan and
coordinate projects; intranets, the Internet, and satellite technology make us more efficient
messengers; and technology even helps us prepare our food and access entertainment more
efficiently. Beyond this concession, however, I find the speaker's contention indefensible from
both an empirical and a normative standpoint.
The chief reason for my disagreement lies in the empirical proof: with technological
advancement comes diminished leisure time. In 1960 the average U.S. family included only
one breadwinner, who worked just over 40 hours per week. Since then the average work week
has increased steadily to nearly 60 hours today; and in most families there are now two
breadwinners. What explains this decline in leisure despite increasing efficiency that new
technologies have brought about? I contend that technology itself is the culprit behind the
decline. We use the additional free time that technology affords us not for leisure but rather for
work. As computer technology enables greater and greater office productivity it also raises our
employers' expectations--or demands--for production. Further technological advances breed
still greater efficiency and, in turn, expectations. Our spiraling work load is only exacerbated by
the competitive business environment in which nearly all of us work today. Moreover, every
technological advance demands our time and attention in order to learn how to use the new
technology. Time devoted to keeping pace with technology depletes time for leisure activities.
I disagree with the speaker for another reason as well: the suggestion that technology's
chief goal should be to facilitate leisure is simply wrongheaded. There are far more vital
concerns that technology can and should address. Advances in bio-technology can help cure
and prevent diseases; advances in medical technology can allow for safer, less invasire
diagnosis and treatment; advances in genetics can help prevent birth defects; advances in
engineering and chemistry can improve the structural integrity of our buildings, roads, bridges
and vehicles; information technology enables education while communication technology
facilitates global participation in the democratic process. In short, health, safety, education, and
freedom--and not leisure--are the proper final objectives of technology. Admittedly, advances
in these areas sometimes involve improved efficiency; yet efficiency is merely a means to
these more important ends.
In sum, I find indefensible the speaker's suggestion that technology's value lies chiefly in the
efficiency and resulting leisure time it can afford us. The suggestion runs contrary to the
overwhelming evidence that technology diminishes leisure time, and it wrongly places leisure
ahead of goals such as health, safety, education, and freedom as technology's ultimate aims.
Issue 18
"Money spent on research is almost always a good investment, even when the results of that
research are controversial."
I agree with the speaker's broad assertion that money spent on research is generally money
well invested. However, the speaker unnecessarily extends this broad assertion to embrace
research whose results are "controversial," while ignoring certain compelling reasons why
some types of research might be unjustifiable. My points of contention with the speaker
involves the fundamental objectives and nature of research, as discussed below.
I concede that the speaker is on the correct philosophical side of this issue. After all,
research is the exploration of the unknown for true answers to our questions, and for lasting
solutions to our enduring problems. Research is also the chief means by which we humans
attempt to satisfy our insatiable appetite for knowledge, and our craving to understand
ourselves and the world around us. Yet, in the very notion of research also lies my first point of
contention with the speaker, who illogically presumes that we can know the results of research
before we invest in it. To the contrary, if research is to be of any value it must explore
uncharted and unpredictable territory. In fact, query whether research whose benefits are
immediate and predictable can break any new ground, or whether it can be considered
"research" at all.
While we must invest in research irrespective of whether the results might be controversial,
at the same time we should be circumspect about research whose objectives are too vague
and whose potential benefits are too speculative. After all, expensive research always carries
significant opportunity costs--in terms of how the money might be spent toward addressing
society's more immediate problems that do not require research. One apt illustration of this
point involves the so-called "Star Wars" defense initiative, championed by the Reagan
administration during the 1980s. In retrospect, this initiative was ill-conceived and largely a
waste of taxpayer dollars; and few would dispute that the exorbitant amount of money devoted
to the initiative could have gone a long way toward addressing pressing social problems of the
day--by establishing after-school programs for delinquent latchkey kids, by enhancing AIDS
awareness and education, and so forth. As it turns out, at the end of the Star Wars debacle we
were left with rampant gang violence, an AIDS epidemic, and an unprecedented federal
budget deficit.
The speaker's assertion is troubling in two other r~sp,ects as well. First, no amount of
research can completely solve the enduring pr~l~rm of war, poverty, and violence, for the
reason that they stem from certain aspects of human nature--such as aggression and greed.
Although human genome research might eventually enable us to engineer away those
undesirable aspects of our nature, in the meantime it is up to our economists, diplomats, social
reformers, and jurists--not our research laboratories--to mitigate these problems. Secondly, for
every new research breakthrough that helps reduce human suffering is another that serves
primarily to add to that suffering. For example, while some might argue that physics
researchers who harnessed the power of the atom have provided us with an alternative source
of energy and invaluable "peace-keepers," this argument flies in the face of the hundreds of
thousands of innocent people murdered and maimed by atomic blasts, and by nuclear
meltdowns. And, in fulfilling the promise of "better living through chemistry" research has given
us chemical weapons for human slaughter. In short, so-called "advances" that scientific
research has brought about often amount to net losses for humanity.
In sum, the speaker's assertion that we should invest in research whose results are
"controversial" begs the question, because we cannot know whether research will turn out
controversial until we've invested in it. As for the speaker's broader assertion, I agree that
money spent on research is generally a sound investment because it is an investment in the
advancement of human knowledge and in human imagination and spirit. Nevertheless, when
we do research purely for its own sake without aim or clear purpose--we risk squandering
resources which could have been applied to relieve the immediate suffering of our dispirited,
disadvantaged, and disenfranchised members of society. In the final analysis, given finite
economic resources we are forced to strike a balance in how we allocate those resources
among competing societal objectives.
Issue 19
"Creating an appealing image has become more important in contemporary society than is the
reality or truth behind that image."
Has creating an image become more important in our society than the reality or truth behind
the image? I agree that image has become a more central concern, at least where short-term
business or political success is at stake. Nevertheless, I think that in the longer term image
ultimately yields to substance and fact.
The important role of image is particularly evident in the business world. Consider, for
example, today's automobile industry. American cars are becoming essentially identical to
competing Japanese cars in nearly every mechanical and structural respect, as well as in price.
Thus to compete effectively auto companies must now differentiate their products largely
through image advertising, by conjuring up certain illusory benefits--such as machismo, status,
sensibility, or fun. The increasing focus on image is also evident in the book-publishing
business. Publishers are relying more and more on the power of their brands rather than the
content of their books. Today mass-market books are supplanted within a year with products
that are essential the same---except with fresh faces, rifles, and other promotional angles. I
find quite telling the fact that today more and more book publishers are being acquired by large
media companies. And the increasing importance of image is especially evident in the music
industry, where originality, artistic interpretation, and technical proficiency have yielded almost
entirely to sex appeal.
The growing significance of image is also evident in the political realm, particularly when it
comes to presidential politics. Admittedly, by its very nature politicking has always emphasized
rhetoric and appearances above substance and fact. Yet since the invention of the camera
presidential politicians have become increasingly concerned about their image. For example,
Teddy Roosevelt was very careful never to be photographed wearing a tennis outfit, for fear
that such photographs would serve to undermine his rough-rider image that won him his only
term in office. With the advent of television, image became even more central in presidential
politics. After all, it was television that elected J.F.K. over Nixon. And our only two-term
presidents in the television age were elected based largely on their image. Query whether
Presidents Lincoln, Taft, or even F.D.R. would be elected today if pitted against the handsome
leading man Reagan, or the suave and poliricaUy correct Clinton. After all, Lincoln was homely,
Taft was obese, and F.D.R. was crippled.
In the long term, however, the significance of image wanes considerably. The image of the
Marlboro man ultimately gave way to the truth about the health hazards of cigarette smoking.
Popular musical acts with nothing truly innovative to offer musically eventually disappear from
the music scene. And anyone who frequents yard sales knows that today's best-selling books
often become tomorrow's pulp. Even in politics, I think history has a knack for peeling away
image to focus on real accomplishments. I think history will remember Teddy Roosevelt, for
example, primarily for building the Panama Canal and for establishing our National Park
System--and not for his rough-and-ready wardrobe.
In the final analysis, it seems that in every endeavor where success depends to some
degree on persuasion, marketing, or salesmanship, image has indeed become the central
concern of those who seek to persuade. And as our lives become busier, our attention spans
briefer, and our choices among products and services greater, I expect this trend to continue
unabated--for better or worse.
Issue 20
"Most of the people we consider heroic today were, in fact, very ordinary people who
happened to be in the right place at the right time."
I agree with the statement insofar as our heroes tend to be ordinary people like us. However,
I strongly disagree with the further assertion that people become heroes simply by being "in
the right place at the right time." If we look around at the sorts of people we choose as our
heroes, we real/ze that heroism has far less to do with circumstance than with how a hero
responds to it.
I concede that heroes are generally ordinary people. In my observation we choose as our
heroes people with whom we strongly identify--people who are very much like us. In fact many
of us call a parent, grandparent, or older sibling our hero. Why? My intuition is that the more a
person shares in common with us----m terms of experience, heritage, disposition, motives, and
even physical attributes-----~e more accessible that person's heroic traits are to us, and the
stronger their attraction as a role model. And few would dispute that we share more in common
with immediately family than with anyone else.
However, the statement's further suggestion that people become heroes merely as a result
of circumstances not of their own choosing is simply wrongheaded. Admittedly, circumstance
often serves as a catalyst for heroism. After all, without wars there would be no war heroes. Yet
this does not mean that we should lionize every member of the armed forces. I find quite telling
the oft-used idiom "heroic effort," which suggests that mere coincidence has little to do with
heroism. If one examines the sorts of people we select as our heroes, it becomes evident that
heroism requires great effort, and that the very nub of heroism lies in the response, not in the
circumstance.
Consider the ordinary person who overcomes a personal obstacle through extraordinary
effort, fortitude, or faith---thereby inspiring others toward similar accomplishments. Sports
heroes often fall into this category. For example, Lance Armstrong, a Tour de France cycling
champion, became a national hero not merely because he won the race but because he
overcame a life-threatening illness, against all odds, to do so. Of course, widespread notoriety
is not a requisite for heroic status. Countless individuals with physical and mental disabilities
become heroes in their community and among their acquaintances by treating their obstacles
as personal challenges--thereby setting inspirational examples. Consider the blind law student
who inspires others to overcome the same challenge; or the amputee distance runner who
serves as a role model for other physically challenged people in her community. To assert that
individuals such as these become our heroes merely by accident, as the statement seems to
suggest, is to completely misunderstand the very stuff of which heroes are made.
Another sort of hero is the ordinary person who attains heroic stature by demonstrating
extraordinary courage of conviction--against external oppressive forces. Many such heroes
are champions of social causes, rising to heroic stature by way of the courage of their
convictions; and, it is because we share those convictions--because we recognize these
champions as being very much like us----~at they become our heroes. Such heroes as India's
Mahatma Gandhi, America's Martin Luther King, South Africa's Nelson Mandela, and Poland's
Lech Lawesa come immediately to mind. None of these heroes was born into royalty or other
privilege; they all came from fairly common, or ordinary, places and experiences. Or consider
again our military heroes, whose courage and patriotism in battie the statement would serve to
completely discredit as merely accidental outcomes of certain soldiers being "m the right place
at the right time." I think the preposterousness of such a suggestion is clear enough.
In sum, the statement correctly suggests that heroes are ordinary people like us, and that
opportunity, or circumstance, is part of what breeds heroes. However, the statement overlooks
that serendipity alone does not a hero make. Heroism requires that "heroic effort," or better yet
a "heroic response," to one's circumstances in life.
This statement is fundamentally correct; public figures should indeed expect to lose their
privacy. After all, we are a society of voyeurs wishing to transform our mundane lives; and one
way to do so is to live vicariously through the experiences of others whose lives appear more
interesting than our own. Moreover, the media recognize this societal foible and exploit it at
every opportunity. Nevertheless, a more accurate statement would draw a distinction between
political figures and other public figures; the former have even less reason than the latter to
expect to be left alone, for the reason that their duty as public servants legitimizes public
scrutiny of their private lives.
The chief reason why I generally agree with the statement is that, for better or worse,
intense media attention to the lives of public figures raises a presumption in the collective mind
of the viewing or reading public that our public figures' lives are far more interesting than our
own. This presumption is understandable. After all, I think most people would agree that given
the opportunity for even fleeting fame they would embrace it without hesitation. Peering into
the private lives of those who have achieved our dreams allows us to live vicariously through
those lives.
Another reason why I generally agree with the statement has to do with the forces that
motivate the media. For the most part, the media consist of large corporations whose chief
objective is to maximize shareholder profits. In pursuit of that objective the media are simply
giving the public what they demand a voyeuristic look into the private lives of public figures.
One need look no further than a newsstand, local-television news broadcast, or talk show to
find ample evidence that this is so. For better or worse, we love to peer at people on public
pedestals, and we love to watch them fall off. The media know this all too well, and exploit our
obsession at every opportunity.
Nevertheless, the statement should be qualified in that a political figure has less reason to
expect privacy than other public figures. Why? The private affairs of public servants become
our business when those affairs adversely affect our servants' ability to serve us effectively, or
when our servants betray our trust. For example, several years ago the chancellor of a
university located in my city was expelled from office for misusing university funds to renovate
his posh personal residence. The scandal became front-page news in the campus newspaper,
and prompted a useful system-wide reform. Also consider the Clinton sex scandal, which
sparked a debate about the powers and duties of legal prosecutors vis4-vis the chief executive.
Also, the court rulings about executive privilege and immunity, and even the impeachment
proceedings, all of which resulted from the scandal, might serve as useful legal precedents for
the future.
Admittedly, intense public scrutiny of the personal lives of public figures can carry harmful
consequences, for the public figure as well as the society. For instance, the Clinton scandal
resulted in enormous financial costs to taxpayers, and it harmed many individuals caught up in
the legal process. And for more that a year the scandal served chiefly to distract us from our
most pressing national and global problems. Yet, until as a society we come to appreciate the
potentially harmful effects of our preoccupation with the lives of public figures, they can expect
to remain the cynosures of our attention.
Issue 17
"The primary goal of technological advancement should be to increase people's efficiency so
that everyone has more leisure time."
The speaker contends that technology's primary goal should be to increase our efficiency for
the purpose of affording us more leisure time. I concede that technology has enhanced our
efficiency as we go about our everyday lives. Productivity software helps us plan and
coordinate projects; intranets, the Internet, and satellite technology make us more efficient
messengers; and technology even helps us prepare our food and access entertainment more
efficiently. Beyond this concession, however, I find the speaker's contention indefensible from
both an empirical and a normative standpoint.
The chief reason for my disagreement lies in the empirical proof: with technological
advancement comes diminished leisure time. In 1960 the average U.S. family included only
one breadwinner, who worked just over 40 hours per week. Since then the average work week
has increased steadily to nearly 60 hours today; and in most families there are now two
breadwinners. What explains this decline in leisure despite increasing efficiency that new
technologies have brought about? I contend that technology itself is the culprit behind the
decline. We use the additional free time that technology affords us not for leisure but rather for
work. As computer technology enables greater and greater office productivity it also raises our
employers' expectations--or demands--for production. Further technological advances breed
still greater efficiency and, in turn, expectations. Our spiraling work load is only exacerbated by
the competitive business environment in which nearly all of us work today. Moreover, every
technological advance demands our time and attention in order to learn how to use the new
technology. Time devoted to keeping pace with technology depletes time for leisure activities.
I disagree with the speaker for another reason as well: the suggestion that technology's
chief goal should be to facilitate leisure is simply wrongheaded. There are far more vital
concerns that technology can and should address. Advances in bio-technology can help cure
and prevent diseases; advances in medical technology can allow for safer, less invasire
diagnosis and treatment; advances in genetics can help prevent birth defects; advances in
engineering and chemistry can improve the structural integrity of our buildings, roads, bridges
and vehicles; information technology enables education while communication technology
facilitates global participation in the democratic process. In short, health, safety, education, and
freedom--and not leisure--are the proper final objectives of technology. Admittedly, advances
in these areas sometimes involve improved efficiency; yet efficiency is merely a means to
these more important ends.
In sum, I find indefensible the speaker's suggestion that technology's value lies chiefly in the
efficiency and resulting leisure time it can afford us. The suggestion runs contrary to the
overwhelming evidence that technology diminishes leisure time, and it wrongly places leisure
ahead of goals such as health, safety, education, and freedom as technology's ultimate aims.
Issue 18
"Money spent on research is almost always a good investment, even when the results of that
research are controversial."
I agree with the speaker's broad assertion that money spent on research is generally money
well invested. However, the speaker unnecessarily extends this broad assertion to embrace
research whose results are "controversial," while ignoring certain compelling reasons why
some types of research might be unjustifiable. My points of contention with the speaker
involves the fundamental objectives and nature of research, as discussed below.
I concede that the speaker is on the correct philosophical side of this issue. After all,
research is the exploration of the unknown for true answers to our questions, and for lasting
solutions to our enduring problems. Research is also the chief means by which we humans
attempt to satisfy our insatiable appetite for knowledge, and our craving to understand
ourselves and the world around us. Yet, in the very notion of research also lies my first point of
contention with the speaker, who illogically presumes that we can know the results of research
before we invest in it. To the contrary, if research is to be of any value it must explore
uncharted and unpredictable territory. In fact, query whether research whose benefits are
immediate and predictable can break any new ground, or whether it can be considered
"research" at all.
While we must invest in research irrespective of whether the results might be controversial,
at the same time we should be circumspect about research whose objectives are too vague
and whose potential benefits are too speculative. After all, expensive research always carries
significant opportunity costs--in terms of how the money might be spent toward addressing
society's more immediate problems that do not require research. One apt illustration of this
point involves the so-called "Star Wars" defense initiative, championed by the Reagan
administration during the 1980s. In retrospect, this initiative was ill-conceived and largely a
waste of taxpayer dollars; and few would dispute that the exorbitant amount of money devoted
to the initiative could have gone a long way toward addressing pressing social problems of the
day--by establishing after-school programs for delinquent latchkey kids, by enhancing AIDS
awareness and education, and so forth. As it turns out, at the end of the Star Wars debacle we
were left with rampant gang violence, an AIDS epidemic, and an unprecedented federal
budget deficit.
The speaker's assertion is troubling in two other r~sp,ects as well. First, no amount of
research can completely solve the enduring pr~l~rm of war, poverty, and violence, for the
reason that they stem from certain aspects of human nature--such as aggression and greed.
Although human genome research might eventually enable us to engineer away those
undesirable aspects of our nature, in the meantime it is up to our economists, diplomats, social
reformers, and jurists--not our research laboratories--to mitigate these problems. Secondly, for
every new research breakthrough that helps reduce human suffering is another that serves
primarily to add to that suffering. For example, while some might argue that physics
researchers who harnessed the power of the atom have provided us with an alternative source
of energy and invaluable "peace-keepers," this argument flies in the face of the hundreds of
thousands of innocent people murdered and maimed by atomic blasts, and by nuclear
meltdowns. And, in fulfilling the promise of "better living through chemistry" research has given
us chemical weapons for human slaughter. In short, so-called "advances" that scientific
research has brought about often amount to net losses for humanity.
In sum, the speaker's assertion that we should invest in research whose results are
"controversial" begs the question, because we cannot know whether research will turn out
controversial until we've invested in it. As for the speaker's broader assertion, I agree that
money spent on research is generally a sound investment because it is an investment in the
advancement of human knowledge and in human imagination and spirit. Nevertheless, when
we do research purely for its own sake without aim or clear purpose--we risk squandering
resources which could have been applied to relieve the immediate suffering of our dispirited,
disadvantaged, and disenfranchised members of society. In the final analysis, given finite
economic resources we are forced to strike a balance in how we allocate those resources
among competing societal objectives.
Issue 19
"Creating an appealing image has become more important in contemporary society than is the
reality or truth behind that image."
Has creating an image become more important in our society than the reality or truth behind
the image? I agree that image has become a more central concern, at least where short-term
business or political success is at stake. Nevertheless, I think that in the longer term image
ultimately yields to substance and fact.
The important role of image is particularly evident in the business world. Consider, for
example, today's automobile industry. American cars are becoming essentially identical to
competing Japanese cars in nearly every mechanical and structural respect, as well as in price.
Thus to compete effectively auto companies must now differentiate their products largely
through image advertising, by conjuring up certain illusory benefits--such as machismo, status,
sensibility, or fun. The increasing focus on image is also evident in the book-publishing
business. Publishers are relying more and more on the power of their brands rather than the
content of their books. Today mass-market books are supplanted within a year with products
that are essential the same---except with fresh faces, rifles, and other promotional angles. I
find quite telling the fact that today more and more book publishers are being acquired by large
media companies. And the increasing importance of image is especially evident in the music
industry, where originality, artistic interpretation, and technical proficiency have yielded almost
entirely to sex appeal.
The growing significance of image is also evident in the political realm, particularly when it
comes to presidential politics. Admittedly, by its very nature politicking has always emphasized
rhetoric and appearances above substance and fact. Yet since the invention of the camera
presidential politicians have become increasingly concerned about their image. For example,
Teddy Roosevelt was very careful never to be photographed wearing a tennis outfit, for fear
that such photographs would serve to undermine his rough-rider image that won him his only
term in office. With the advent of television, image became even more central in presidential
politics. After all, it was television that elected J.F.K. over Nixon. And our only two-term
presidents in the television age were elected based largely on their image. Query whether
Presidents Lincoln, Taft, or even F.D.R. would be elected today if pitted against the handsome
leading man Reagan, or the suave and poliricaUy correct Clinton. After all, Lincoln was homely,
Taft was obese, and F.D.R. was crippled.
In the long term, however, the significance of image wanes considerably. The image of the
Marlboro man ultimately gave way to the truth about the health hazards of cigarette smoking.
Popular musical acts with nothing truly innovative to offer musically eventually disappear from
the music scene. And anyone who frequents yard sales knows that today's best-selling books
often become tomorrow's pulp. Even in politics, I think history has a knack for peeling away
image to focus on real accomplishments. I think history will remember Teddy Roosevelt, for
example, primarily for building the Panama Canal and for establishing our National Park
System--and not for his rough-and-ready wardrobe.
In the final analysis, it seems that in every endeavor where success depends to some
degree on persuasion, marketing, or salesmanship, image has indeed become the central
concern of those who seek to persuade. And as our lives become busier, our attention spans
briefer, and our choices among products and services greater, I expect this trend to continue
unabated--for better or worse.
Issue 20
"Most of the people we consider heroic today were, in fact, very ordinary people who
happened to be in the right place at the right time."
I agree with the statement insofar as our heroes tend to be ordinary people like us. However,
I strongly disagree with the further assertion that people become heroes simply by being "in
the right place at the right time." If we look around at the sorts of people we choose as our
heroes, we real/ze that heroism has far less to do with circumstance than with how a hero
responds to it.
I concede that heroes are generally ordinary people. In my observation we choose as our
heroes people with whom we strongly identify--people who are very much like us. In fact many
of us call a parent, grandparent, or older sibling our hero. Why? My intuition is that the more a
person shares in common with us----m terms of experience, heritage, disposition, motives, and
even physical attributes-----~e more accessible that person's heroic traits are to us, and the
stronger their attraction as a role model. And few would dispute that we share more in common
with immediately family than with anyone else.
However, the statement's further suggestion that people become heroes merely as a result
of circumstances not of their own choosing is simply wrongheaded. Admittedly, circumstance
often serves as a catalyst for heroism. After all, without wars there would be no war heroes. Yet
this does not mean that we should lionize every member of the armed forces. I find quite telling
the oft-used idiom "heroic effort," which suggests that mere coincidence has little to do with
heroism. If one examines the sorts of people we select as our heroes, it becomes evident that
heroism requires great effort, and that the very nub of heroism lies in the response, not in the
circumstance.
Consider the ordinary person who overcomes a personal obstacle through extraordinary
effort, fortitude, or faith---thereby inspiring others toward similar accomplishments. Sports
heroes often fall into this category. For example, Lance Armstrong, a Tour de France cycling
champion, became a national hero not merely because he won the race but because he
overcame a life-threatening illness, against all odds, to do so. Of course, widespread notoriety
is not a requisite for heroic status. Countless individuals with physical and mental disabilities
become heroes in their community and among their acquaintances by treating their obstacles
as personal challenges--thereby setting inspirational examples. Consider the blind law student
who inspires others to overcome the same challenge; or the amputee distance runner who
serves as a role model for other physically challenged people in her community. To assert that
individuals such as these become our heroes merely by accident, as the statement seems to
suggest, is to completely misunderstand the very stuff of which heroes are made.
Another sort of hero is the ordinary person who attains heroic stature by demonstrating
extraordinary courage of conviction--against external oppressive forces. Many such heroes
are champions of social causes, rising to heroic stature by way of the courage of their
convictions; and, it is because we share those convictions--because we recognize these
champions as being very much like us----~at they become our heroes. Such heroes as India's
Mahatma Gandhi, America's Martin Luther King, South Africa's Nelson Mandela, and Poland's
Lech Lawesa come immediately to mind. None of these heroes was born into royalty or other
privilege; they all came from fairly common, or ordinary, places and experiences. Or consider
again our military heroes, whose courage and patriotism in battie the statement would serve to
completely discredit as merely accidental outcomes of certain soldiers being "m the right place
at the right time." I think the preposterousness of such a suggestion is clear enough.
In sum, the statement correctly suggests that heroes are ordinary people like us, and that
opportunity, or circumstance, is part of what breeds heroes. However, the statement overlooks
that serendipity alone does not a hero make. Heroism requires that "heroic effort," or better yet
a "heroic response," to one's circumstances in life.
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