Rhetorical Precis of "The Parental Investment Factor and the Child's Right to an Open Future"

In "The Parental Investment Factor and the Child's Right to an Open Future" (2009) Dena Davis asserts that the cost of gene mapping as well as the potential of forcing an unborn child into hobbies they may not like is unethical. Davis supports this claim by using children that were born naturally and how they sometimes do not agree with what their parents want for their future. The writer soons suggests that gene mapping gives a child a life that may seem unfilling. Davis uses the example of giving a child the physical attributes to be a football player, however, the attributes of the mind cannot be picked so the child might want to play the piano instead of be a quarterback. Davis has a very strong opinion on this topic showing the risk for such gene mapping does not out weigh the end result. Her tone is very stern especially for picking and choosing the "acceptable" genes a parent wants for their child. She outlines the costs of such procedures as well as the risks involved for both the mother and the child. By outling this she hints to the readers that reproduction should not be risky nor expensive but rather suprising and wonderful.

"The Parental Investment Factor and the Child's Right to an Open Future"

10 Questions

Brainstorm 10 Questions That You Want To Know About

1.      The use of the controversial Meth billboards, do they work any statistics behind it?

2.      How do children learn basic skills such as reading and talking?

3.      What are the crucial steps during pregnancy for development of a healthy baby?

4.      Why is America falling behind on an international level? Education system?

5.      What is autism, and how is it diagnosed?

6.      What is the acceptance rates to most medical schools?
7.      Choosing the sex of an unborn child?
8.      What are the duties of labor and delivery nurses?

9.      What are the duties of a nursery nurse?

10.  What exactly do influenza vaccines do?

Rhetorical Precis Chapter 9

In Chapter 9 of "Good Reasons Researching and Writing Effective Arguments" Lester Faigley and Jack Selzer assert that finding a casual claim on a controversial trend, event, or phenomenon is key to building a strong argument. Faigley and Selzer support their claim by suggesting that by picking a controversial topic the writer can choose a side and think of possible causes of this trend, event, or phenomenon. The writers soon suggest that by analyzing your potential readers the writer can figure out how in depth they should go on the background of the topic and identify how likely the readers are to accept the casual explanation. Faigley and Selzer seem to have a supportive tone towards providing students with steps to writing a casual argument. They seem to keep their audience in mind by outlining each step and giving key details about each step that can help a writer become successful when writing a casual argument.

Rhetorical Precis Chapter 7

In Chapter 7 of "Good Reasons Researching and Writing Effective Arguments" Lester Faigley and Jack Selzer assert that a writer rarely sets out to define something in an argument for the sake of the definition, to compare for the sake of comparison, or to adopt any other ways of structuring an argument. Faigley and Selzer support their claim by suggesting that many writers now a days have a purpose in mind and they use the kinds of arguments that use multiple approaches and multiple sources of good reasons. The writers soon suggest that by using a combination of different approaches and multiple sources to support the argument being presented.Faigley and Selzer seem to have a supportive tone towards providing students with good information about writing an argument. They seem to keep their audience in mind by outlining what the next few chapters have in store for the reader.

"Knowledge is Power"

In today's age many people are very technologically savvy. The internet today allows a majority of its' information to be readily looked at by any interested viewer. Scholarly articles, however, do not fall under the category of free. I believe that scholarly research should be available to everyone that is seeking knowledge because that is what allows our country to grow intellectually. Researchers who write scholarly articles do not do so because of the great money they receive, or there lack of, but rather for the credibility it will bring to their name. On the other hand many scholarly research websites charge a large fee (estimate $25,000 by Kevin Seeber) users to look at these types of scholarly articles. I feel that if someone is interested enough to look up a topic such as "Correlations Between Death and Smoking" then information should be readily available. This person looking this information up could be thinking about stopping smoking but just want some solid research behind why smoking is bad for you. In the article Priced To Sell I think that this point about prices is an example of why wikis are used so much "price difference between the two chocolates was exactly the same, but that magic word “free” has the power to create a consumer stampede." Wikis are excellent to get information but the ability for people to edit whatever they feel ruins the credibility. The cost to look up simple medical facts on Wikipedia is $0, where it would cost a college student to see such facts in a research paper is basically the cost of their tuition for that semester. If there was a scholarly website identical to JSTOR but was free I believe that more people would find valuable and reliable information. The cost for such academic journals is ridiculous and the fact that it is part of many classes cirriculum to cite such sources is a little extreme. A technological utopian not just for students but for the public would be the ability to find an article that has facts and research behind it without spending a cent for the valuable information. Just maybe if such educated information was available to the public the United States would be able to educate more people for free, causing a widespread effect of the overall thought that education and knowledge is a free right to everyone not just people with thousands of dollars to blow.

Rhetorical Précis of Margaret Woodworth's Article

In Margaret Woodworth's article "The Rhetorical Précis" (2007) she asserts that younger students become better writers in general  when they engage in daily practice in writing summaries such as rhetorical précis. Woodworth supports her claim by suggesting that after students have mastered the rhetorical précis process students will be able to easily see the use of rhetoric in an article. This highly structured four-sentence paragraph highlights the important rhetorical elements. Her purpose in writing this article was to show how utilizing the rhetorical précis in an English class can help improve the success of the student overall, such as having 76% more students find understanding what they read "less difficult." Margaret Woodworth seems to have a supportive tone towards the use of rhetorical précis inside an English classroom. With the tremendous statistics that support this versatile way of summarizing it seems as if Margaret Woodworth actually uses this strategy herself. Keeping in mind that her audience is both teachers and students, she does not fail to give crucial facts and explain the importance of this strategy; for it will help the learning of her audience for a lifetime.

Rhetorical Précis of "Aaron Swartz, Coder and Activist, Dead at 26"

In his article “Aaron Swartz, Coder and Activist, Dead at 26” (2013), Kevin Poulsen asserts that technological problems will now go unsolved, or be solved a little less brilliantly because of the death of Aaron Swartz. Poulsen supports his claim by going into detail about the many accomplishments of Aaron Swartz such as working with Larry Lessig to launch the Creative Commons, he architected the Internet Archive’s free public catalog of books, OpenLibrary.org, and in 2010 he founded Demand Progress. Poulsen soon challenges the legal system, suggesting that Aaron Swartz was driven to suicide due to the long pre-trial motions, lasting over 18 months. His purpose in writing this article is to show how Aaron Swartz believed that information/knowledge collected through research should be available to everyone, not just solely on people that have money. Kevin Poulsen seems to have a supportive tone towards the actions of Aaron Swartz, such as hacking JSTOR. He seems to keep his audience in mind, by pointing out that JSTOR was not a free journal database but a database used in a wealthy college such as MIT.