Minor Essay 3

James Gartland

Eric Earnhardt

English 151

18 March 2011

The Infallibility of Human Systems

The recent disasters in Japan were incredibly destructive and devastating. The earthquake, tsunami, and imminent threat of nuclear disaster have quickly and unexpectedly taken the lives of man Japanese citizens while ruining the lives of countless more. The world has taken notice, and millions of dollars from people around the globe are being sent to Japan to help them in their time of need. It is a truly terrible disaster, but what can we learn from events like this. Harold Meyerson, writer for the Washington Post, says that the disasters in Japan are only the most recent occurrence in a trend of devastated economic and social systems. In his article “From Japan's devastation, our Lisbon moment?”, Meyerson describes what he believes is a major problem with how the world's financial and social systems.

He begins his article by discussing the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755. He provides shocking information of the severe impact the earthquake had on people. Although this is a good way to catch the readers attention, it seems out of place when compared to the rest of his article. The rest of the article is about current problems and recent events, but he begins with a description of the travesty of a past event. This section of the article is irrelevant to the point of the essay, and only exists to give the article a powerful, emotional opening, but without any relevance to his argument, which is based on recent events..

Next, Meyerson states his thesis, that the catastrophe in Japan should weaken peoples faith in our own infallibility. He argues that most people assume that many systems designed by experts are assumed to be completely immune to the effects of disaster and invulnerable to destruction. This argument begins by using the straw man logical fallacy. In stating that most people think that these systems are literally safe from all disaster, Meyerson misrepresents the views of the people. Although it is commonly accepted that economic and social structure organized by professionals are not likely to fail completely, most people understand that there are unplanned events which can damage these systems. From the way Meyerson worded his argument, he makes it sound like people don't understand that it is impossible to be ready for every possible problem.

To support his argument, Meyerson refers to the recent problems with the American and World economies. He says that everybody believed that the economic system was perfect and that it was immune to all risk, over exaggerating the extent to which people believed in the structural integrity of the economy. He goes on to describe how certain human factors, such as greed and denial were not accounted for, leading to the destruction of US and World economies. There is some truth to this statement because the greed of a few men did a great deal of damage to the economy, but the economic system was by no means destroyed. Meyerson describes this event in a misleading way in order to make it a better example of a flawed human system.

Although Meyerson is correct that man made systems are not infallible, no one was arguing that they were. His use of irrelevant information and misrepresentation of supporting evidence creates an unconvincing article.

Works Cited

Meyerson, Harold. "From Japan’s Devastation, Our Lisbon Moment?." The Washington Post. 15 Mar. 2011. Web. 18 Mar. 2011. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/from-japans- devastation-our-lisbon-moment/2011/03/15/ABPH0yZ_story.html>.

Minor Essay 2

James Gartland

Eric Earnhardt

English 151

17 March 2011

Birth Defects' Relation to Pain Drugs

Having children is one of the most basic necessities of preserving our society. Pregnancy, one of the most important stages of reproduction causes a great deal of pain and discomfort for women. Although it is a natural process, many medical improvements are made to pregnancy more comfortable and less painful. Do the potential side effects of pain relief medications outweigh the benefits? New York Times writer Roni Rabin gave her views on this subject in her recent New York Times article “Risks: Pain Drugs May Lead to Birth Defects”.

In her article, Rabin refers to the National Birth Defects Prevention Study for 1997 through 2005. The study was conducted by the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as her main source of information. The study interviewed mothers from ten states to find a correlation between birth defects and the use of pain drugs during pregnancy. Only opioid based pain drugs, such as codeine and oxycodone, were included in the study.

Rabin claims that the recent study suggests that women who take opioid pain drugs will have a heightened risk of their child having birth defects. In the beginning of the article she states that, “babies whose mothers took opioids were considerably more likely than others to have congenital problems” (Rabin). Although the article does show a slight correlation between opioid treatment and certain birth defects, the results of the actual study show very little relation between the two. Rabin's use of the term considerable to describe how much more likely women who used the drugs were to have birth defects in their children is slightly misleading.

Despite her misleading opening to her article, Rabin backs her assertion well by providing statistics from the study. She reports that the study found that 2.6 percent of the mothers having babies with birth defects also had treatment with opioids before or during pregnancy. She goes on to say that the control group of women, whose children had no birth defects, only had a 2.0 percent usage of opioid treatments. These percentages mean that there was a .6 percent increase in use of pain relief drugs in women with children born with defects. This use of statistical information helps Rabin's credibility and strengthens her point that women using the pain relief drugs are more likely to have a child with birth defects than women who do not use them.

Although Rabin damages her credibility by using misleading language to open her article, she clarifies her early claims with statistical information later. Even though the statistics show that the correlation between oplioid use and birth defects is very small, it still exists. Any factor which increases the likelihood of birth defects, no matter how small, is not worth the risk. Children are the most important resource for the future, and there is no pain relief which is worth endangering one's own child. Rabin's point is validated because of her use of hard evidence to show that pain relieving medication used during pregnancy slightly increases the likelihood of birth defects, and any increase in birth defects is simply not worth the risk.

Works Cited

Rabin, Roni C. "Risks: Pain Drugs May Lead to Birth Defects." The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 17 Mar. 2011. Web. 17 Mar. 2011. <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/health/research/22risks.html?_r=1&ref=health>.

Summary/Strong Response essay

James Gartland

Mr. Eric Earnhardt

English 151

4 March 2011

In Response to The Story of Stuff

The materials economy is the process in which materials are extracted, produced into goods, distributed to consumers and disposed. This is a fundamental system to the global economy which has been used for many years, but is the system broken? Although the materials economy has made it easy and convenient to obtain various goods at affordable prices, it needs to be reexamined and reorganized.

The Story of Stuff is a brief animated video by Annie Leonard, published on December 4, 2007. In the video, she argues that the materials economy is a broken, linear system which needs to be reformed into a cyclical system. She separates the system into five stages, extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal. She then goes through each of the stages and explains the problems in each stage. Although the video is easily understood and provides many good arguments against the current system, it misrepresents many of its stages in order to simplify the explanation.

Leonard begins her description of extraction by providing terms which she claims are synonymous to extraction. She says extraction is another way of saying natural resource exploitation, or trashing the planet. It is understandable to try to put extraction in simple terms to make the video comprehensible to a large audience, but opening the section in this way is needlessly biased against the system and “trashing the planet” is a terribly inaccurate explanation of the extraction process. There is some truth to the explanation because of the negative impacts extraction has on the environment, but Leonard misses the point of extraction completely. She then says that this process is when “we chop down trees, we blow up mountains to get the metals inside, we use up all the water and we wipe out the animals” (Leonard 2). This essentially opens the video by arguing that the purpose of the first stage of the materials economy is to commit acts of evil against nature. In this simplified explanation, Leonard is being unfair to the current system by failing to mention any positive side of extraction, which is that it is the process by which the world collects resources and without it there would be no food, water, or any material goods. In her attempt to simplify the information, she left out the purpose of extraction when stating its environmental consequences. Although the inaccuracy of the opening explanation of extraction makes Leonard appear to lack a good understanding of the materials economy, she actually follows it with intelligent arguments which support her thesis well and shows that she knows what she is talking about.

Leonard has the same problem when discussing the next stage of the materials economy, production. She says that production is when “we use energy to mix toxic chemicals in with the natural resources to make toxic contaminated products” (Leonard 4). This again fails to mention the purpose of production and harshly reiterates that step two of the system is to be evil. She ignores that production is how natural resources are made into our food and material goods and instead portrays it as the process by which the materials economy poisons the consumers. Leonard's continued insistence that the materials economy only exists to damage people and the environment destroys her credibility.

Her explanation of the next step, distribution, restates that the products are toxic and contaminated, but unlike the previous two stages, she mentions the actual goal of this stage, which is to sell the products. Although she has a better explanation of this stage, its purpose is only mentioned very briefly, and then she goes back to ignoring the positive aspects of distribution. Even though this section of the video also fails to give a fair chance to the current system, it argues her thesis better than the previous sections. This is because Leonard claims that the goal of extraction is destroying the earth and the goal of production is poisoning the resources, but when she describes distribution, she says that its goal is to sell everything as fast as possible. Unlike the first and second stages, this one has a believable purpose which makes her argument seem more credible than simply stating that it is evil.

The Story of Stuff is a concise and easily understandable video which argues that there needs to be changes made in the current materials economy. It presents many valid points ina simplistic manner, but some parts of it are oversimplified to a point which they simply misrepresent the actual facts. Although Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff offers many good examples and convincing evidence against the current materials economy, the presentation of most of the stages is damages to the credibility of the video and is detrimental to the persuasiveness of its arguments.

Introduction

     My name is Jimmy Gartland, I am from Powell, Ohio. Currently. At home I have 3 brothers, a sister, 2 cats, and a dog. I really don't like my dog because she barks at me all the time and she is incredibly stupid. At Ohio University I am majoring in Mathematics and minoring in Spanish, I don't know why I'm minoring in Spanish, but It fulfills some of my academic requirements. I live in Perkins on East Green but I spend more time at Read Hall because all my friends live there.

    

     Right now I don't see recent problems with the world as any indication that we are moving toward an apocalypse. Human society has been full of injustice and violence for our entire recorded history, probably since the beginning of the human race. From my knowledge of history instances of these evils seem constant, but not increasing, making an apocalypse unlikely. but I am open to new ideas and there is a good chance that I will change my mind by the end of the quarter.