MbShea@PWP@English@UMCP

But, you may also see stasis theory "moves" in these articles, too.

I will post Friday's Eli Review task this morning: concerns some preliminary ideas/knowledge you are seeing in your selected article for Assignment 3.

I am here: 9-9:50; 10-10:50, and 11:50 at same Google Meet link.

Happy Wednesday.  Snow flurries this morning (tiny ones!).

Empty subjects! What are they? Perfectly usable subjects in sentences that can introduce confusion for readers.  Try to avoid these constructions. Resources for you:

• Empty subjects (there is/are; it) This short web exhibit is chock-full of examples.
• Another name is dummy subjects (also web exhibit)

DO NOT USE THESE PLACEHOLDER CONSTRUCTIONS IN YOUR MEMO.  

Speaking of the memo, here is a checklist for you. This checklist also notes in red (along with empty subjects) the idea of giving examples,  You may want to try this.  Examples of the coffee cup choice you note can help readers visualize the recommendation.  More on this in class.

via GIPHY

via GIPHY

Now, a mea culpa to you.  My presentation about listing ideas in text v. the flow chart early on is utterly confusing.  I did not curate/present this well.  Two of your colleagues asked for help. Therefore, I whipped up this short presentation in a googl doc. We will talk about this today. Within this presentation, you can see some variations in paragraph order that you can choose now, as you work toward your final version for a grade (next week).

Upcoming:  Friday night post of 98% done document.  Monday?  Peer collaboration.

About Eli Review tasks, this morning the peer collaboration task due last night is at 57%.  Come on, people. Get to those tasks to help each other!

I also want to talk briefly about a resource sent me by a student that will really change the assignment for fall 2022.

Finally, I found this realistic and hopeful.  Check out the podcast about Ben Franklin, history, inoculation/vaccination.  Good conversation between health policy hero Andy Slavitt and historian/documentary filmaker Ken Burns 

Friday.  I posted your Eli Review task.  Due tonight.  Try to be on time for each other.

Holding office hours today: 9-9;50, 10-10:50, 11-11:50. Same Google meet link as always.

Jane wants a coffee cup policy for the office that is "green." This means, your first stasis or conjecture question is 

What is better for the environment: the paper coffee cup or the Styrofoam coffee cup?

(repasting for your convenience) From Week Six, good background:

• 2019 Science Daily research summary on polystyrene, sunlight, and persistence as a pollutant. Note: Science Daily is a really good science journalism site that you can use as an open access referral link for many writing contexts.
• 2017 Anthropocene magazine "Science Short" on coffee cups and their environmental impact.
• 2021 Atlantic magazine analysis of the limits of recycling.

Jane wants you to use available science (see the readings linked on Monday PLUS your brief round-up of Hocking and Moore's peer-reviewed pieces). She already knows that the reusable coffee cup is better; be real, though, as people use disposables and she wants an analysis for company decision making. Remember that the Governor asked about this technical problem.

Here is an arrangement for your memo/recommendation report. Roughly, P = paragraph. HINT: open this large image in new tab in your browser to see where we are going with this pattern.

 A few items for today:

• Critical thinking about web sources in several ways;
  • as reasonable proxies for peer reviewed work
  • as "spinning" or greenwashing or trustwashing acts
  • respecting corporate/industrial contributions but also caveat emptor applies
  • situating culturally and geographically (we are not Canada, even, let alone Europe!)
• Frames and decision criteria help limit the huge invention in which you research and think
  • Excluded: two attributes, namely cost and health effects in manufactoring and use
  • Included: the frame you select, either
    • climate change problem+broad solution=energy efficiency-->TEAM FOAM
    • aquatic plastic fate problem+prefer degredating materials v. persistent materials-->TEAM PAPER

Preview: using curated referral links to punt on larger definitional material. 

• IPCC most recent summary about climate change's exigence
• Charles Moore Algalita Foundation on aquatic plastic (founder ethos)
  •  Chesapeake focus (2016 overview from NOAA); Fin fish+microplastic since 50s (Science Daily 2021 summary); Question: what about oysters and crab?

Aid and comfort to you:

• At the end of the memo/short recommendation report, you can identify additional approaches
• You might close with a brief commentary on how oil/petroleum feedstock is common to both problems and that might be the place for rational, technical action (whoa on the politics but still, we proceed with truth as we can know and describe. 

Good morning.  Google link here for (-9:50; 10-10:50; 11-11:50).

 Here is a lesson on paragraphs and FREE PARAGRAPH text to work with.  You do not need to include this stuff in your Eli Review work but the knowledge is here now and we will begin with this example on Monday.

Lesson on paragraphs, here for early in your memo, in the definition/description move where we also need to address context.  Skill?:  Coherence in a paragraph (sample content but the paragraphs might not be complete for the purposes of your coffee cup paper). Coherence is what we achieve when we order for cognitive flow (think transitions).

"Meh" paragraph
Plastic and paper cups pose problems for recycling. Ceramic cups are very energy intensive to produce. Recycling seems environmentally-sound.  Paper does not degrade deep within most landfills and the plastic coating is also difficult.  Not all plastic can be recycled.  You need to check the bottom of the container.  Landfills are increasingly full.  There is a huge "patch" of garbage in the Pacific Ocean.

Note: can you see the compare/contrast move here, even in this meh or necessary draft version?

Better paragraph
Paper and plastic both pose disposal problems.  First, not all plastic can be recycled. Check the bottom of the plastic container. "No. 1" and "No. 2" types can be recycled by most facilities. Second, paper does not degrade deep within most landfills because of low oxygen conditions. The plastic coating also interferes with decay. Landfills are increasingly full.  There is a huge "patch" of garbage in the Pacific Ocean.

Note: do you see a place for a referral citation, using the first background pieces posted earlier? Some students find that using a referral link helps them feel more comfortable.  But, truly this knowledge is common UNLESS YOU CITE A SPECIFIC DETAIL LIKE VOLUME.  However, many of us do NOT know this, so is courtesy to reader to instruct with a referral link. Ongoing theme: citation helps readers.  Think about the positive aspect of citation, including that you are experienced by the reader as helpful.

Even better paragraph (can you see the re-thinking of content as well as sentence-level revision)
Paper and plastic both pose disposal problems.  First, not all plastic can be recycled. Check the bottom of the plastic container. "No. 1" and "No. 2" types can be recycled by most facilities. Second, paper does not degrade deep within most landfills because of low oxygen conditions. The plastic coating also interferes with decay. Landfills are increasingly full, with paper and plastic part of the waste stream. Not all plastic is recycled or landfilled. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) a huge "patch" of garbage in the Pacific Ocean is further evidence of the environmental harm posed by plastic.

Note: do you see a place for a referral citation? Caution, that NRDC piece has been taken down. Keep in mind that even good stuff on the internet goes away.  You can use the Charles Moore foundation pages as a referral citation.

More sentences/phrases to use next week. ==== (pivoting away from definition/desorption to analysis; reveal your decision criteria!) Here, we are at the LCA (Life cycle analysis or assessment) definition paragraph content items:

use a sourcing sentence (signal phrase) like "According to ........Life cycle analysis (LCA) assesses......

Life cycle analysis is the primary decision criteria used in this memo to evaluate our coffee cup choice."

Note that Martin Hocking's work uses LCA to assess the energy intensivity of paper, styrofoam, and ceramic cups. Especially good for TEAM STYRO.

Charles Moore's work on the fate of ocean plastic focuses on the disposal step of life cycle analysis. Especially good for TEAM PAPER.

(These last two sentences serve as transitions to the summary paragraphs where you focus on the science of Hocking OR the science of Moore, depending on your recommendation. This is the heart of your memo, the EVALUATION PARA that uses evidence for your claim on which cup is better, given your problem frame)

This NEW memo content is more complex and wide-ranging. One craft technique concerns transitions are a way to thread the cognition for our busy readers. Your first memo focused on the definition stasis, with a evaluation move at the end. The content and definition frame was limited in ways that helped with most of the transitions between paragraphs.  We want to deepen our ability to work with transitions.

First, begin by looking at this OWL PURDUE exhibit on useful transition words and phrases.  Back to paragraphs, recall our train image where we let the couple be the transitional element that links both cars:  

• look at the last sentence of each paragraph; 
• then look at the first sentence in the next paragraph.

Do you see connection between content, including a reasonable pivot to new information?  The paragraphs, although they stand alone in topic and content, should CONNECT or TRANSITION with the surrounding paragraphs.  

Paragraph check: Ask

• What is the paragraph doing in the document?  What type of paragraph serves this purpose? For example, a narrative paragraph can tell a brief story or present a case or example.  An illustrative paragraph – cousin to descriptive paragraphs - paints a picture.
  
• Is the paragraph cohesive?  Does the content “hang” together?  Do the sentence choices achieve cohesion?  Look at the transition words and phrases in the OWL link above.  You can use them to achieve cohesion and flow between sentences. This focus is called local coherence, which is key to achieving flow.
  

Finally, paragraphs do not truly stand alone in most documents. Paragraphs combine to provide coherent content in a document for a reader.  Ask this:  do the paragraphs fit and support the arrangement or structure of the document?  Focus on transitions between paragraphs, which help with cohesion in the document.  Local coherence (within a paragraph) + global coherence (between paragraphs and within a document) create overall flow.

Cheap! Way To achieve cohesion between paragraphs try "chaining" by transitions. Place the  topic of the next paragraph in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph. The first sentence of the new paragraph must include that topic also. Doing this knits or binds the paragraphs to each other.  Here is how a math person would say this: 

Let ParaA be the preceding paragraph. 

Let ParaB be the following paragraph.  

Let T be the topic that should appear in both paragraphs.  

We will limit our discussion now to two sentences: 

• the last sentence of ParaA and the 
• first sentence of ParaB. 

In reality, ParaA and ParaB exist in a document with an arrangement of many paragraphs.

ParaA relates to ParaB through the last sentence of ParaA AND SIMULTANEOUSLY through the first sentence of ParaB. The relating elements is a topic, T;  T can be a repeated word or a phrase.  Some variation on T makes for good style.  Now, let's look at two real world documents that show two types of T: tight transitions and loose transitions.

MEMO 2: Now, our boss wants a problem-solution memo about the type of coffee cup we use in our firm. Therefore, we need to frame this work with the stasis of policy (what ought we do).

We will need to read about this topic This reading task is your most important work on Friday. You can begin with these short pieces:

• 2019 Science Daily research summary on polystyrene, sunlight, and persistence as a pollutant. Note: Science Daily is a really good science journalism site that you can use as an open access referral link for many writing contexts.
• 2017 Anthropocene magazine "Science Short" on coffee cups and their environmental impact.
• 2021 Atlantic magazine analysis of the limits of recycling.

Back to our boss: Jane wants a coffee cup policy for the office that is "green."  This is your question (first stasis).  We have lots of definitions that you will need to think about before Monday.

 CLASS DISCUSSION ON PROBLEM FRAMING!!!!

• Two environmental problems 
  • climate change
  • fate of ocean plastic

Incommensurability

Dividing a problem into simpler "models"

Decide which problem to weight more fully.

Sometimes we reverse engineer

What if we not agree with question or problem division? Keep notes on this.

• do both?
• find out which problem is worse
• re-usables, right?

Happy Friday.  I will be around between 9-9:50, 10-10:50, and 11-11:50 at the same link for all semester: GoogleMeet for Shea/Science writing.

A few of you have asked about incommensurability.  Here is long entry from the Stanford Library of Philosophy (online). TLDR?

• Some concepts, methods, frames, social problems as well as policy decisions cannot be compared directly. Why?  They lack a common measure.  Some of the is math-focused but qualitative factors can be part of incommensurability, too. 
  • Consider apples and oranges, that old metaphor. 

Have you heard of paradigm shift to describe how scientists build knowledge (claim and counter claim. Thomas Kuhn, philosopher of science, claims science process reveals that some discussions/arguments about competing paradigms fails to "make complete contact with each other’s views." This means (apples and oranges) that those in the "conversation" are always talking at least slightly at cross-purposes.

Kuhn calls the collective causes of this communication failures incommensurability. Here are some examples:

• the Newtonian physics paradigm is incommensurable with its Cartesian and Aristotelian predecessors in physics;
• Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier’s paradigm is incommensurable with that of Joseph Priestley’s in chemistry.
• God's action as designer conflicts with Darwin's central understanding of evolution condenses into natural selection.

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For us, we cannot compare directly the gravity of climate change with the fate of aquatic plastic.  Therefore, in our memo we must lead with this:

In my analysis of hot beverage cups and environmental footprint, I weight climate change more heavily than ocean plastic.  Therefore, this frame is a central assumption in this short problem-solution report.

...

Later in this short report, I will address this conceptual framing limitation and speak briefly about how framing this problem as one of ocean plastic leads to another recommendation.

If you chose this frame, you are TEAM STYROFOAM this month. If you weight aquatic plastic as the central frame, then you sentences look like this:

In my analysis of hot beverage cups and environmental footprint, I weight the fate of ocean plastic more heavily than climate change; this frame is a central assumption in this short problem-solution report.

...

Later in this short report, I will address this conceptual framing limitation and speak briefly about how framing this problem as one of  climate change leads to another recommendation. 

via GIPHY