Author Archives: davidbdale

Critical Reading: Organ Donations This week, following the model of critical reading I provided in Kidney Season on Death Row. I’ll ask you to closely examine the claims made, inferences made, and conclusions drawn by the author of one of … Continue reading →

Coins with Two Heads Claims are debatable assertions. They are the heart of argument. Your thesis statement is always a claim of one kind or another. Without claims, there are no essays worthy of calling essays. You write a clear … Continue reading →

If you’re using “talks about, discusses, or covers” language in your Proposal (almost everybody does so at least once), take time in class today to fix it; it’s always a deficiency. Example: The article talks a lot about how the … Continue reading →

Housekeeping and Miscellany Housekeeping: Grades Available at Professor Conferences Housekeeping: Request Feedback for Summaries and Proposals Diversion: Humans of New York New Agenda Lecture/Discussion: Why Bother [to write a paper at all if you don’t have some new argument to … Continue reading →

It’s approaching 1PM on TUE FEB 25 and I see A05: Proposal 5 Sources posts from the following classmates: Casmir Reihing Simone Stilley Alex LaVallee Ryan Veltman Stephen Rivera-Lau Troi Barnes Vinny Colantuoni Marcus Patterson Benjamin Balesteri Angela Kotala Drew … Continue reading →

Finding Sources vs. Using Sources Imagine a psychologist who believes that children raised by single parents are more aggressive and likely to abuse their own children later in life. She has noticed a trend in her patients that leads her … Continue reading →

A simple idea: take photos of anonymous strangers on the streets of New York, ask them a few questions, post their answers and captions, and gain 3,000,000 followers on facebook. Check it out, and leave a comment for this nice … Continue reading →

Housekeeping and Miscellany Housekeeping: Grades Available at Professor Conferences Housekeeping: Request Feedback for Money Rewrite if Desired Riddle/Exercise: The Shimmer Wall at the Franklin Institute New Agenda Lecture/Discussion: Claims Handout Lecture/Discussion: The Safe Saw Nobody Will Buy Assignments Pending TUE … Continue reading →

Early in February, the French government made a big display of destroying tons of ivory to publicly declare its opposition to the illegal ivory trade that is costing African elephants their lives in such numbers that extinction seems inevitable if … Continue reading →