In-class 4/20

Passage A

1 Did you know, that you're not really working for yourself until May 5th?

2.In Washington, D.C., a group learned that it takes workers an average of four months and four days to earn enough money to pay their taxes.

3.In their study, the group found that taxes eat up approximately 34% of all income in the United States.

4.Therefore, if workers use their entire income to pay taxes, then they wouldn't be done paying them until May.

5. The group studying this issue offers some advice.

6. The idea they formulated is a potential bill that will name May 5th, "Tax Freedom Day."

7. On May 5th, workers would get a break from work, regardless of how hard they had been working.

8. Therefore from May 5th on, workers would finally get to be their own boss.

Passage B

1Did you ever daydream about writing your life story?
2Do you think that your life is too dull, or that you can’t write?
3Anyone’s life story is filled with fascinating events, and writing them down in the best way you know how can give you a sense of accomplishment and, perhaps, leave a valuable inheritance to your family.
4The first thing to do is to buy a loose-leaf notebook.
5Each page of the book should be titled with a significant milestone from your life—from your first dog to your proudest moment.
6You should then jot down a few key words in the book whenever a memory comes back to you.
7The idea is not to begin with “I was born . . .” and try to write a chronological history of your whole life.
8Just delve into your past at random; one memory will trigger another.
9It will become quite easy after a while.
10It's also important to write in your own language.
11Plain, honest writing is the goal.

In-Class Writing 2

1.)
Implicit
I don't think you should go out with him. I heard that he doesn't have a job and that he just broke up with his long-term girlfriend.

Explicit
You shouldn't go you with him, because he wouldn't be able to take you out anywhere since he doesn't make any money. Also, he could still have feelings for his long-term ex.

2.)
Implicit
Race is still an important considertion in American politics today. I recently heard President Bush speak about hate crimes in schools

Explicit
Even though segragation laws no longer exist and people are no longer forced to be slaves, race predjudices still exist in American politics today. Although race issues have come a long way since before, they still do exist and are something that need to be adressed, as President Bush recently did to schools involving hate crimes.

3.)
Implicit
Argumentative essays are meant to show your views and opinions and sway your reader to the side you have taken. My essay took an obvious side but it just listed why capital punishment should be abolished.

Explicit
The goal of an argumentative essay is to persuade the reader to either accept your point of view or reject theirs and accept yours. This has to be done by effective arguing and persuasion, not just a list of the positives and negatives.

In-Class Writing 3/6/2009

Practicing engineers and scientists say they currently spend about half of their time writing out memos and reports, which is in contrast to a common belief held by many college students. Many students, especially those going into business, believe that their future secretaries will do most of their writing for them and therefore object to enrolling themselves in writing courses. Also, students going into technical or scientific fields think that writing will be something they will seldom do, which is incorrect for most young buisness people. More often than not, young business people rarely have private secretaries to do their writing for them. The common notion that only poets and novelists have to write is therefore an unrealistic ideal. A person in any field will surely be more successful if they can clearly express their ideas through writing.

Topic Proposal

Policy Paper

I’m planning on taking a global approach using a proposal argument on the topic of the amount of patients getting away with filing medical malpractice claims that are not really so.
The problem is that the economy is breeching a third major crisis in the medical malpractice world. The laws and rules for what is and what is not being considered as malpractice are constantly changing, and some hospitals are getting charged with malpractice cases that should they should not be responsible for, however their defense is too weak against an injured person.
All medical treatment facilities should have the same set of rules for what is defined as a medical malpractice case. Although each case is different and assigning a set of rules may be complicated, something needs to be done in order to even out the playing field across the country.
A hospital in Idaho recently changed its’ policies and the amount of malpractice cases significantly decreased after the change. In other parts of the country, however, laws stipulate stricter rules as to what is considered malpractice. Therefore, more patients are getting away with accusing doctors of medically wronging athem when the true cause was from a different source.
The perspective that medical treatment facilities should build a strong defense against patients so that they are not constantly being accused of medical malpractice.

Kapp, Marshall B. Our Hands Are Tied: Legal Tension and Medical Ethics. Auburn
House: Westport, CT. 1998.
"Is Full Disclosure an Antidote to Medical Malpractice?" Chicago Medical Society. 10 March 2009. http://www.cmsdocs.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=433&Itemid=2
I currently am only questioning if enough information exists to support my argument.

Freewrite 2

III. CAMPUS ISSUE:
Formulate a change/introduction of policy you feel the USC campus needs. Make clear if there is a policy in place that needs change or if there needs to be a policy that is currently lacking.
Play Devil's Advocate: argue for the existing state of things. What is the motivation for the existing policy? Why have not the authorities introduced the policy for which you argued above?

One thing I believe needs to be changed at USC is the signing in and out of residence halls. I personally live in Patterson hall and have experienced this frustration first hand. In order to make it past the front desk and up to my room I must first swipe my Carolina Card and wait for the light to turn green. Sure, that sounds reasonable enough, however is actually a very frustrating demand. An example of this is after Thanksgiving break, when I needed to carry up six different loads of my belongings up to my room, and was not allowed to walk past the front desk without swiping my card. Maybe if I had a third hand, this wouldn't have been a problem, however it was blatently obvious that I lived in Patterson seeing as I was carrying bags and bags of things upstairs. The person at the desk forced me to stand there waiting for a friend to stop what they were doing and bring down my card before I could pass. This happened on all six of my trips from the car to my room, even after the person at the desk saw me swipe my card green five times before. My friends at other colleges don't have to worry about this and most of the time they are recognized as residents before walking in the door. I think an all girls dorm should allow any females to freely pass into the dorm without being bothered.

The problem with letting everyone into the dorm means that any type of person could get in, which puts everyone in danger. The strict rules for swiping your card and signing in all guests who don't live in the dorm makes the dorm more secure and safer for everyone inside. The rules for swiping your card have to be uniform throughout the whole campus to avoid any bias.

Freewrite

One topic that changed my perspective was the issue of Barbie dolls and the negative self-images they plant in childrens heads. I had never thought of Barbie dolls to be something negative, and seeing Barbie dolls in stores now always reminds me of my childhood, and it is interesting to watch the new Barbie dolls advertised and see the difference of those being made today compared to the ones made when I was a child. After reading an article against the use of Barbies, my thoughts on the topic changed. The article argued that Barbie dolls give children, especially girls, a false impression on what is beautiful. An interesting point made by the article said that if a Barbie doll was to be made into a real person, she would be over six feet tall with long, skinny proportions, unlike those of a human. This shows how Barbies make children think they can be something they will never be able to be, despite any efforts. This ultimately changed my perspective about Barbie dolls.

SWA #11

The articles "Opposition to Shelter Rises," and "What Did Not Work: Effort to Centralize Homeless Services", are the two most credible articles because they were both published in The State newspaper, a trusted source. The article "Four Corners Best Answer on Homeless" is the next most credible because the author has several qualifications that show that his opinion on the topic of homelessenss is credible. He is a downtown resident, real estate developer, executive board member of the City Center Partnership, donor to work done by Oliver Gospel, which are all qualities that improve his credibility. The least credible article is "Homeless Situation Has No Easy Answers," because the only certifications that the reader learns about the author is that they previously worked as a counselor for the Salvation Army.
To measure the credibility of an article beyond just checking where it was published you can look throughout the article to see if the author lists any qualifications they have, such as their profession. Less credible pieces can be used in a research paper to strengthen a point that has already been made, or maybe to make a point about the opinions held by those less educated on the topic,

SWA #9

Lynn Smith argument that using the term "retarded" as a negative, derogatory insult in her essay "The 'Retarded Renaissance." This is a valid argument because those who are mentally challenged have feelings just like any other person, and for someone to call them retarded not only damages their self esteem, that is likely to already be lower than normal. Because nowadays teenagers use words like "gay" and "retarded" out of their true context, calling someone retarded has now taken on a different and slandering meaning. The word retarded has even become popular in hollywood through movies when they use the word retarded in an out of context way, however failing to realize those who are definitionally retarded are offended by it. Furthermore, because the word retarded is used by people to mean something that is stupid or negative, it clearly is a word that could be termed as "hate speech." This also means that the word retarded could be used to describe someone who is being slow or is in the way, not specifically someone with mental illness. For example, if someone described her friend who was wasting her time sleeping all day as retarded, it would be grammatically incorrect because her friend is impeding herself from being active and making progress. In this context, using the word retarded to describe someone is in no way hate crime.

SWA#8

1.) The issue I chose to write about was medical malpractice. Some people believe that the laws regarding malpractice are far too strict and inhibilitate physicians from performing at their highest level, because they are constanly playing defense. The other belief is that these laws are too relaxed and malpractice insurance covers up too much of doctors mistakes.2.) The ethos present in this topic are clearly a large part of the debate. Whenever someone files a malpractice suit against doctors, they are claiming that the doctors directly resulted in worsening the condition of the patient. This involves ethos because the doctors are left to decipher the thin line between what is ethical and what is unethical in order to avoid lawsuits. This topic applys to pathos because readers can all relate to having medical care, because everyone has been to the doctor sometime in their lives. Also, when reading about this topic, people tend to put themselves in a situation where they are the victim of malpractice, so it creates a tie between them and the issue. Logos is present in this issue because doctors must face a legal jury and court in order to fight malpractice cases, so the routine is very formal and involves people who must be knowledgeable in order to win their argument. 3.) A) One opinion is held by someone whose family member died from a medical error in a hospital. This author therefore holds the opinon that malpractice laws are far to leniant and doctors are allowed to get away with too much. Also, he stresses the fact that compensation from malpractice cases is not enough and will never undo what has been done.
B) A second opinion about malpractice laws is written by an attorney who works with medical disputes. He writes that malpractice laws are too harsh, and physicians are constantly thinking of what could go wrong to cause them a law suit and therefore not performing to their full abilities. This means that patients could be receiving better care, but the risk of doctors being sued for unfair malpractice is prohibiting them from doing so.
C) A third opinion involving malpractice laws is that factors other than doctors are contributing to mistakes in medicine. Factors such as interactions with other people or gene history are examples of these factors.




Melissa Walser
Annotated Bibliography
English 102
28 February 2009

Medical Malpractice: An Annotated Bibliography

Kapp, Marshall B. Our Hands Are Tied: Legal Tension and Medical Ethics. Auburn
House: Westport, CT. 1998.

This book was written by an attorney, Marshall Kapp, who worked in a medical education setting for several years. Since the author actually experienced the content of his text first hand, the material is therefore very reliable and precise, since he actually experienced the topics he brings up. Primarily, the author writes about the general issue of medical malpractice, and how it is something that has been around for forever; however, lately the number of claims filed against medical malpractice has been rapidly increasing. Kapp then describes the claim of his book, which is to tell readers that physicians’ medical abilities are being compromised due to the harsh laws being forced onto them by medical malpractice. Because the ethics of medicine are hard lines to distinguish versus the clear lines of the law, doctors nowadays are often turning into “defense mode” in order to avoid any sort of potential law suit against them, and therefore compromising the chances of a patient who is ill.
Overall, Kapp defends physicians by examining how the laws against medical malpractice are too harsh and are ultimately causing doctors to perform below their abilities in order to play it safe. Coming from a legal standpoint, Kapp is very knowledgeable on what is legal and illegal; therefore, his claims are more credible since he is educated on the topic.
I plan to use this book to help form one opinion on medical malpractice, which is to show that the laws are too harsh are ultimately compromising doctors abilities.

Sloan, Frank. Bovbjerg, Randall. Githens, Penny. Insuring Medical Malpractice.
Oxford University Press: New York, NY. 1991.

This book examines different aspects of malpractice insurance policies held by different medical firms throughout the years. The introduction begins by contrasting malpractice laws held in the 1960s compared to those in place in the 1980s, and lastly those laws held in place today, and shows the immense differences that have accompanied with time. Most importantly, this book attempts to explain the differences in malpractice insurance laws that have come about throughout time. The text makes a claim against the large number of laws present in medicine today and defends the time when malpractice laws were small in number
Furthermore, the book also takes into account the individual law firms that employ the different stipulations of malpractice laws. The text compares different firms and examines how each one competes with each other, and in turn what this does to the different policies each one creates for their individual health care beneficiaries.

I plan to use the information provided in this book to show how competition between law firms creates some malpractice laws that ultimately cause doctors to perform much differently in order to avoid breaking a law or getting a lawsuit against them.

Studdert, David. "Management or Avoidance of Medical Malpractice Crises?" Chest.
November 2008. February 2008.
http://www.chestjournal.org/content/134/5/901.full.pdf+html

This article, written rather recently, describes how nowadays insurance premiums are starting to flatten out again, indicating that the third medical malpractice crisis within the last thirty-five years seems to be passing. The article writes about how within the last few years the insurance against medical malpractice was skyrocketing and becoming increasingly unreasonable like it has done several times in the past; however, this time the crisis was not as intense as before. Furthermore, the article goes on to examine what, if anything, we have learned after this third malpractice crisis.
The article writes of how physicians are demanding that the insurance policies will be modified so that it will be harder for patients to sue doctors for unreasonable ethics and when there is no true medical malpractice being performed. Meanwhile, some lawyers still fight for the policies to be harsh, to ensure that doctors cannot get away with recklessness. I plan to use information from this article to show both the physicians’ and the opposing lawyers’ arguments towards new medical malpractice policies.

Bogner, Marilyn. Human Error in Medicine. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Hillsdale, NJ
1994.

The author of this book is an employee of the United States Food and Drug Administration, which shows that she has credibility and knowledge on the subject of drug misuse. The introduction of her book very simply describes the relationship that accompanies a mistake, and how that mistake is usually offloaded onto the person “in charge”. She states that the purpose of her book is to create motivation for decreasing the number of medical errors that occur through health care by examining the factors that could be responsible for the mistake.
The author writes about the different conditions that could possibly cause fatal experiences to a patient receiving care, and explores other options than simply blaming the doctor for the cause of death or injury to the patient. For example, she talks about the several interactions a patient experiences while they are receiving care in a facility such as a hospital. Not only does the patient interact with the doctor, but also several nurses and any visitors or other patients in the hospital. She examines how all of these factors could contribute to a patients’ condition worsening, not just a doctor making a mistake.
I will use different points made by Bogner in her book to help support the opinion that doctors are not fully responsible when they cannot successfully alleviate all symptoms of a sick patient.




Hogan, Neal. Unhealed Wounds: Medical Malpractice in the Twentieth Century. LFB
Scholarly Publishing LLC: New York, NY 2003.

This article begins by describing the history of malpractice. Like several other texts, the article talks about how malpractice in the beginning of the twentieth century was hardly ever an issue, but has become increasingly important throughout the years. This article effectively tells the history of malpractice and shows how and why it has become as important as it is today. Throughout time, many revisions have been done on malpractice laws in order to avoid anything unfair slipping through the cracks. For example, many years ago patients were suing doctors because they did not cure them of their sickness, when the doctors had said that they would. Although this was unfair because doctors can never be 100% sure of what they can do, the patients won the case and therefore malpractice laws had to be clearly established.
The difference in this article and the others is that this article is building a claim against doctors, by saying that their defensive malpractice insurance allow them to have too much room for mistake, and not enough pressure for accuracy. This article was written by someone who lost a parent to a medical error, therefore the text is written with passion.
I plan to use this article to help build the opinion of those who believe that physicians are getting off too easily by having a insurance security blanket that allows them to make mistakes without reaping much detriment.

Studdert, David. Mello, Michelle. Brennan, Troyen. “Medical Malpractice”. The New
England Journal of Medicine. Vol: 350 No: 3. January 15, 2004.

This article stressed the definition of medical malpractice and gave me a better understanding of the purpose and goals of it. Malpractice law is a law of tort, meaning that it is a law pertaining to personal injury. Therefore in order for someone to file a malpractice lawsuit, they must prove that the defendant owed them something that they failed to accomplish. In order for a court to decide whether, in this case, a physician owed someone a certain care they must inquire the behavior of other physicians, and decide what “common actions” other doctors would have taken in the same situation. These common actions and behaviors therefore define what makes up malpractice laws.
This article gave me a clearer definition of the purpose of having malpractice laws and how courts decided whether a certain behavior was in fact malpractice behavior or not. I will use the information gained from this article to help define what malpractice is and how it is legally accepted.

Danzon, Patricia. “The Frequency and Severity of Medical Malpractice Claims.” Journal
of Law and Economics. Vol. 27, No. 1. April 1994. pp. 115-148

This article directly examines the frequencies and severity of malpractice cases in the past 30 years. By using several graphs and tables, the information shows that since the 1970s there has been a very large increase in the amount of cases that target malpractice. This article explained this trend by taking several factors into account. First off, for a case to be considered as malpractice, the victim must prove that they were personally injured due to a physician’s actions. The increase of cases could be explained by the increase in scope of liability of medical providers, meaning that doctors are becoming more responsible for taking different actions. The article gives several examples of the changes that have been made, making health care providers more at risk for being sued for malpractice. For example, hospitals are now completely liable for the actions of their employees, instead of the individual employee.
Using this article will benefit my paper because it gives direct examples of how malpractice laws have changed over the years, and attempts to explain the increase of malpractices cases since the 1970s. The information in this article will also help in determining what trends are likely to happen in the future, and what people have learned from the malpractice crises in the past.

Danzon, Patricia. “Liability for Medical Malpractice.” The Journal of Economic
Perspectives. Vol. 5 No. 3. Summer 1991. pp 51-69

This article goes into detail about the logistics of liability. This article was interesting to me not only because the points being brought up made sense, but also because each point that was made were unlike those in other sources. The article talks about how unlike other goods, medical services are usually infrequently purchased, and are patient-specific. For example, every person who gets a nose job will be treated differently, depending on their appearance, bone structure and muscle makeup; therefore, since medical treatments are not homogenous goods, a general consensus is not enough to reject a malpractice claim. The article also talks about how patients generally underestimate the risks in some situations when they are receiving care, and don’t realize this until it’s too late, which in turn causes them to think they should have received more knowledge on the subject, and blame the doctors for this.
Another point brought up by this article is the fact that most people have insurance that would cover a large part of medical treatment. That means that doctors will always get paid for their services, which would imply they would act skillfully in order to receive their paycheck; however, some argue that this would cause physicians to act carelessly knowing they would get paid nevertheless.
This article brings up several different arguments and testifies each side of the argument, which will help in establishing different points of view in my exploratory paper.

In-Class Writing #2

• Write down the issue in a complete sentence. What is the exigence of the issue?
  
• The issue behind Barbie is that Barbie is responsible for the development of poor body images in girls.


• Explain the parts of the rhetorical situation and the intended audience.
  
• The text appeals to pathos because many of those reading the article most likely played with Barbies or had sisters or friends that did, therefore they recall their childhood. Since the article is arguing against Barbies and saying that they are responsible for low self-esteem, this will in turn cause many readers to question themselves and the idea that Barbie dolls might have this effect on girls.
  The text also appeals to logos, because it actually gives the measurements a real-life Barbie would be, which shows that a Barbie doll is a model of something that a person could realistically never be, despite their efforts. This then ties in ethos, because little girls want to be like their "perfect" Barbie dolls, which is something they cannot, and the thought a small child striving and failing to be something which will effect them for the rest of their lives not only touches on the reader's emotions but also on their thoughts of what is ethical. The intended audience is most likely teenagers, because the Barbie doll was very popular when the teens of today were younger than when adults of today were young.


• Reconstruct the different positions on the issue, mentioning who holds them and why.
• One position on this issue is that the Barbie doll represented the fact that a woman has choices. This standpoint is held by the makers of the doll, and those who work at Mattel. The opposing position on this issue is that held by the author of the article, which states that the Barbie is responsible for the low self esteem most girls have of themselves.


• Can you sense which position is favored by the author?
• The author is more inclined to think that Barbies are bad role models for girls. This is clear because she admits her wanting to disown the fact that she played with Barbies as a child, and says she believes society needs to rethink the way they are presenting what is beautiful to children.
  

In-class writing

3/2/2009

The topic I chose to write about was medical malpractice, because it was a more controversial topic than I expected and is probably a topic that hasn't been written about very often.
However, one interesting fact I learned about medical malpractice was that the economy is currently coming off one of three malpractice crises that have occurred within the past thirty-five years. I thought this was interesting because it was something I wasn't presently aware of. According to many of my sources, around 2004 the amount of malpractice cases recorded was at very high peak, although this time the peak was smaller than the two before it. Currently, insurance against malpractice is beginning to flatten out again, causing the malpractice curve to return back to a more normal state.

SWA#7

1. Library subscription databases are much different from using the world wide web. Library databases are much more reliable, because only credited authors can post in library databases, whereas anyone can post on the web. Library databases also provide accurate authors, publication dates and other useful information used for citing sources. The web is sometimes much less informal and often does not even cite an author.

2. A bibliography is the aplphabetically arranged list of evaluated sources that are credible, relative to a certain issue, and valuable to research. An annotated bibliography is a bibliography with an attached summary, showing that you understand your source and its' information. Writing an annotated biblography helps in actually understading the information you are researching instead of just blankly reading through it.

3. Credible sources are current, relative topics, from a source that is widely recognizable as a credible source, and has proper citation.

4. You should make a research plan in order to guide your research and to stay both focused and organized. This will make it easier to see what tasks you need to perform by different priority levels. This ultimately will lead to a more successful research paper.

5. Plagiarism is taking someone elses's ideas and using them as your own. This can be done by failing to cite a source in the proper places. To avoid this, writers should take an authors words and interpret them into their own words. If an exact idea is coming from a different source, writers should always site that source.