Counterintuitive Spring 2024

Video of Traffic Stop and Shooting

52-year-old Walter Scott was shot eight times while fleeing an encounter with police officer Michael Slager in South Carolina. He died on the scene of his wounds. Many commentators have tried to find some sense in this senseless death. Most have considered it in the context of several recent deaths at the hands of police. Whatever you may already know of this case, let’s discuss it on the basis of what we can learn from reading one story each of the four that follow. First, we’ll all watch the video. Then, I will assign you one reading. We’ll talk about the case when we’ve all finished our “research.”

 1.  Walter Scott Is Not on Trial

 2.  Officer Race is Not Crucial

 3.  Shot in the Back as He Ran

 4.  The Walter Scott Murder

Assertion

When several things are asserted, the author is presumed to have individually asserted each of them, not necessarily the sum total of them. For example:

The prosecutor asserts that the defendant, a Mr Sweeney Todd, born and raised in London, killed his victim with a razor while administering him a shave, dismembered him with an axe, and disposed of the victim’s body in various locations and by various methods including grinding and baking some parts into meat pies, all for the purpose of collecting a life insurance death benefit on the decedent’s life.

The dozen or so claims in the assertion are each either true or false, but the falseness of one doesn’t invalidate the entire assertion. The individual claims have what contract writers call severability. A false claim can be tolerated without invalidating the entire assertion.

Denial

A skillful denial, on the other hand, can appear to refute the entire assertion, even if only a detail is untrue. Mr Todd, for example, can honestly refute the assertion above even if he murdered and benefited from the death of the decedent (but not exactly in the way asserted). For example, if he sawed (not chopped) and ground the victim’s body parts before baking them into pies, he can honestly say this:

The defendant, Mr Sweeney Todd, born and raised in London, denies having killed the decedent with a razor while administering him a shave, then dismembering him with an axe and disposing of the victim’s body in various locations and by various methods including grinding and baking some parts into meat pies, for the purpose of collecting a life insurance death benefit on the decedent’s life.

On what other bases could Todd deny the assertion? Publish your answers as Replies below.

Real-life Example

AAMCO advertises on radio by playing troublesome car sounds, then diagnosing them as real problems or simple fixes. They close with this tag line:

“At AAMCO, there’s nothing we haven’t heard and can’t fix.”

Does this mean there’s nothing they haven’t heard? No.

Does this mean there’s nothing they can’t fix? No.

All it means is that there’s nothing they can’t fix that they also haven’t heard.

In other words, they can fix what they have not heard.

Obviously, this does no good for AAMCO’s customers who have problems. AAMCO can fix things until they hear about them. After that, all bets are off.

Lecture Text

Readers can bail on us after any word: this one, or the next. Their time is precious; the world is lively with distractions; and increasingly the page where we meet them is studded with seductive links.

Re-read the first sentence, please. I wrote it to introduce a post about the importance of first sentences, but I didn’t mention sentences at all. In fact, the whole short paragraph avoids the brittle topics of sentences and introductions. Instead, it invites readers to contemplate a personal relationship between themselves and the writer, in this case me. It suggests that readers who stop reading are betraying the author. It sympathizes with readers torn between alternatives. It conjures the page as a temptress luring our readers away from us. In this tiny human drama, the reader is the prize and the writer has everything to lose.

The paragraph even plays hard to get, suggesting to the reader that she could probably find more enjoyment elsewhere. It makes her consciously commit. And yes, this reader is female; I can tell you what she looks like. I imagine her to remind myself I’m having a conversation.

Consider the alternative.

It is impossible to overestimate the importance of a first sentence. A good one fulfills three essential roles: to engage the attention of the reader, to introduce the primary topic of the essay that follows, and most importantly, to compel the reader to go on to the next sentence.

You might argue (as I always do with you) that this new paragraph 2 does the job better—that the original purple paragraph 1 and its first sentence waste time and words and don’t get to the point. I would counterargue that humanizing the commerce between writers and readers is the point. The second version names the roles of the sentence, but doesn’t explain why we care. The first version says: it’s personal. We write to fulfill our own needs, and without our readers that need is unmet.

Real Life Examples

Now consider these professional examples from today’s papers (New York Times, Economic Times, Wall Street Journal).

1. Democrats have for too long been passive in the face of the vast amounts of corporate money, most of it secret, that are being spent to evict them from office and dismantle their policies.

• Creates a clear dynamic and pits two parties against one another for jobs and influence. Suggests that one side has been devious, the other weak.

2. We’re in the middle of a remarkable shift in how Americans see the world and their own country’s role in the world.

• Horrible. The vagueness of its claims (“how Americans see the world”; “their own country’s role in the world”) adds up to no claim at all.

3. In the end it was his father’s left hand, found a couple of years ago in a pile of charred bones outside La Plata, that enabled Gonzalo Reggiardo Tolosa to know for a fact the man he never knew was dead.

• Gonzalo never knew his father. He now knows that father is dead. His evidence is the charred bones of his father’s left hand. I’m going to read sentence two.

4. Every literate person assesses written language every day. We find arguments compelling, lyrics melancholy, jokes humorous. We can explain what makes a particular sentence resonate.

• Wastes its humanity. These sentences point at emotion and feeling instead of illustrating them. Its claims are too abstract: we assess; we find; we explain. There are jokes in this paragraph, sad lyrics, and arguments, but its tone is flat.

5. Days after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 shortly after midnight on Saturday, investigators considering a range of possible causes — mechanical failure, pilot error and terrorism — have yet to turn up solid clues.

• Suppose instead this story began:
  

  239 people vanished from the earth on Saturday, and we still don’t know why.

6. More than a dozen Latino men on Long Island have reported being robbed by a Suffolk County police officer, saying he pulled them over while they were driving and stole their money.

• Suppose instead this story began:
  

  If reports are true, a Suffolk County cop has been pulling over Latino drivers on Long Island to rob them.

7. The results of Europe’s most comprehensive survey on violence against women are shocking. The survey, released last Wednesday, reveals that more than one-third of Europe’s women say they have been subjected to physical or sexual violence from the age of 15 on.

• Suppose instead this paragraph began:
  

  Europe’s women are in terrible danger. By their own report, more than one-third of them have suffered physical or sexual violence since turning 15.

8. The Obama Administration may have finally found a way to stop the boom in U.S. energy production.

• Does a brilliant job of creating a villain in a sentence. The administration has been actively trying to kill a profitable business, it says. The evidence? The administration wants to place new animals on the endangered species list. Protecting them will slow approval for new drilling licenses. So the delay in issuing permits to punch holes in the earth is characterized as a “way to stop the boom in energy production,” not as a “way to protect our fragile environment from the disastrous methods we currently use to produce energy.”

9. Liberals claim that only government can control health costs, and when market competition proves otherwise, the White House tries to hide the evidence by sabotaging the market.

• Whatever you think of the argument, there’s no arguing this sentence lays its cards on the table, face up.

10. The investigation into passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines flight who were traveling with stolen passports has drawn attention to a thriving market for illicit documents and the disparity in aviation security across the globe.

• Suppose this sentence began:
  

  From certain airports, our fellow passengers are much more likely to be flying on a stolen passport.

Student Essays

God Hates Fags

The gay rights movement is one of the most prominent movements in the United States. In 37 out of 50 states, gay marriage is still against the law. Gay rights have been fought against for years now and much progress has been made. Even still, people combat the right of homosexual individuals. One movement however, sees this movement as an abomination to society.

• It’s hard to tell from this paragraph that the essay will argue that the incendiary rhetoric of the Westboro Baptist Church has actually created sympathy for the homosexual community. The talk of “movements” generalizes and politicizes the argument before it gets started.
• Suppose instead it began:
  

  The Westboro Baptist Church and its provocative pastor claim they know who God hates, but the anger and revulsion at a recent rally were aimed directly at the church.

The Macronutrient Diet

Nutrition is something that many people in America struggle with. In today’s culture, practically everybody wants to either lose fat or gain muscle. However, the ability to diet accordingly is usually the most common setback that people encounter when trying to improve their physique. The term “diet” itself is often intimidating with its implication that it is going to be extremely restrictive with the quality of food it allows one to consume. Layne Norton, a professional natural bodybuilder with a PhD states that, “‘Diets’’ are interventions that typically target weight loss by elimination of certain types of foods, food groups, or macronutrient groups”. With this is mind, the quality of the food must be prioritized over the quantity, right?

• This article isn’t about macronutrients. It’s about fear. People are afraid of diets. They find them intimidating. Suppose instead this paragraph began:
  

  Nobody wants to diet. The word conjures images of starvation, or worse—months of subsisting on packaged foods that don’t look nearly as good as the pictures on the package.

The Happiness Factor

The most common misconception with someone who is happy is we think that person has meaning in their life. A person who is happier may even have less meaning in their life than there less happy counterparts. Happiness doesn’t define meaning rather it defines contentment. Having meaning in one’s life runs deeper than the mere sensation that happiness brings. Meaning is about contributing to the world, to something greater than oneself. Happiness is just satisfaction with one’s current standpoint on life, and their environment. The world defines happiness as something much greater than what it actually is. Happiness is nothing less than just the satisfaction of one’s current standpoint.

• Contentment, happiness, satisfaction and meaning are riding a merry-go-round. There isn’t a person in sight. More accurately, there is one person, whose name is One.
• Suppose instead this paragraph began:
  

  Happiness is over-rated. It may even be something to be ashamed of. Because it derives from meeting our own selfish goals, we may have to be greedy to call ourselves happy.

Death by Shower

Accidental injury or death can occur at any moment. Accidents are not planned for, it just occurs. Possible accidents are avoided every day, such as slipping in the shower or tripping on a sidewalk. Such a death is unexpected and can be devastating. Although, everyday routines are ignored and are assumed to be safe, when the chance of having an incident can happen on any day. Many insurance policies don’t cover accidental death, and others offer it as an add-on.

• This essay isn’t about actuarial data on accidents. It’s about staying alive. Suppose instead the paragraph began:
  

  We cheat death a thousand times a day, maybe more. Statistics are hard to come by, but the odds of us dying from some silly accident of everyday living are so prevalent that many life insurance policies don’t cover them.

Get rid of those that can go.
Most of them can go.

One popular way to complicate a simple expression is to add unnamed people and place them into a confusing and unnecessary cause/effect situation. Readers can be misled into thinking the identities of the players in these dramas are important. In addition, the characters introduce gender and number problems where they don’t belong.

Here’s the simple sentence that does not require an if/then or any anonymous actors:

Teenage drivers are being ticketed for speeding proportionally more often than other drivers.

The Hard Way:

If the driver looks as if he or she might be a teenager, then he or she is more likely to be pulled over and given a ticket for speeding by an officer who thinks he or she might be a youthful driver.

In addition to unnecessarily complicating our simple idea, this sentence is also massively overpopulated with at least one female teenage driver and one male, plus an opinionated officer.

A Valid Objection:
You may say that the new sentence introduces a fresh and useful piece of information about the prejudice of certain traffic officers, and I agree. But the solution is not to place everybody into if/then mayhem.

Instead, if you want to feature the drivers:

Easy way #1:

Teenage drivers are ticketed for speeding by opinionated traffic officers proportionally more often than other drivers.

Easy way #2:

Teenage drivers are victimized by opinionated traffic officers who give them proportionally more speeding tickets than they give other drivers.

Or, if you think the focus of your sentence now features the traffic officers:

Easy way #3:

Opinionated traffic officers ticket teenage drivers for speeding far more often than they do other drivers.

EXAMPLES FROM REAL LIFE

1. Problem: My writing was based on who my audience was and what kind of paper I was writing for. For instance, if my writing was for an editorial, then of course personality was not implemented into its tone. However, if I was writing a Letter to the Editor then tone is instrumental when it comes to establishing my point; it becomes necessary.

• Correction: I used a personal tone for appropriate audiences. For instance, I kept my personality out of my editorial writing, but used it to establish tone in my Letter to the Editor.

2. Problem: Creating and shaping ideas are great ways to add uniqueness and purpose to one’s writing, but that’s only the case if his or her writing is inherently good.

• Correction: Good writers create and shape unique ideas.

3. Problem: I learned it was much easier to keep my purpose known throughout my writing, as well as the reasoning behind it. Even if it was not necessarily what I agreed with personally, I realized it was vital for my attitude on the paper to be one the audience can familiarize with.

• Correction: I learned to defend even positions I personally reject by using clear and obvious reasoning throughout my writing.

THE EXERCISE

Rephrase each of the numbered sentences below to eliminate the unnecessary if/then constructions and the needless cast of characters. As above, the solution to the problem is often to name the category of person who acts out the behavior:

• youthful drivers instead of drivers who look as if they might be teenagers, or
• prejudiced officers instead of cops who think that teenagers are more likely to violate the law.

1. Do your work in the Reply field below this post.
2. Number your sentences to match the examples.
3. If you do two versions to feature different agents, use 1A and 1B, for example.
4. Finish the exercise before the end of class.
5. You may depart for Spring Break when I have reviewed your work.

THE SENTENCES

1. It’s almost guaranteed that if we continue disregarding our pollution and effects on Global Warming, we’ll see storms like Sandy more than once a year.
2. If they had realized that the infrastructure of the levees, before Katrina, was outdated, maybe then the city’s people could have prevented such devastation.
3. The Park Ranger should have been allowed to take the semi-automatic weapon away from Mr. Embody if he felt that the citizens in the park were in danger.
4. The most important idea to consider is the safety of all citizens, and in the case of Leonard Embody, the safety of those in the park that day could have been in jeopardy if it were not for the park ranger, Steve Ward, who smartly and correctly detained him.
5. As people of character we know to do the right thing even if no one is watching.
6. If students learn ethical behavior now, then further down the road if they face an ethical dilemma, even if the opportunity of making a dishonest decision presents itself, maybe they’ll think twice about taking that risk.
7. They clearly did not understand what Harvard was trying to teach them, if they needed to resort to such conduct in order to overcome this obstacle.
8. The Stock Exchange needed to be open for morale, even if trading was limited and slow, and it needed to be open for the Street, “to show that it was there,” Silverblatt explained.
9. If the parents of a man or woman haven’t voted in their lifetimes, then their child is not as likely to vote than they would be if he or she had been brought up in a household where the parents always vote.
10. Portugal will not legalize all drugs but will decriminalize them, which for the most part means that if a citizen is caught with illicit drugs, then they will not be incarcerated.
11. If a person consumes a caloric surplus of 500 calories per day, they are going to gain weight regardless of the type of food they’re eating, even if it is “clean.”
12. If someone is satisfied with one’s life, then they are less likely to help others in need.
13. If one were looking at the islanders of Yap, one could see a much simpler version of how the entire world operates today.
14. Rape is when any unwanted sexual act is forced upon a person. If the sexual act is not consensual, then that is considered rape.
15. Rape is when one of the participants can not or does not give consent. A party can not give consent if they are not of the proper age or under the influence or alcohol or drugs.

I wrote two sentences recently that contain a paragraph of material each. They’re not perfect sentences, but their advantages over the paragraphs they represent make them fit models of writing that earns better grades. The magazine Mother Jones publishes a series of articles on counterintuitive ecological topics called Econundrums.

Grade-worthy 1

My favorite Mother Jones Econundrums puncture the inflated claims of greenness too often made by commercial operations determined to sell us something they pretend has big environmental advantages.

This sentence packs a lot of material and delivers it in a steady stream that needs no punctuation. Commalessness is not a requirement of good writing, but it’s good evidence of fluency, which I do require. Let’s unpack the sentence into its component claims.

The Unworthy Bloated Paragraph it Came From

Commercial operations are in business to sell us something. They know a large percentage of consumers would prefer to buy something that is kind to the environment. They will choose a green product over a similar but planet-killing product if they can find one. But companies don’t necessarily make the “greenest” products. Often they exaggerate the environmental friendliness of their products to trick us into making purchases that don’t really benefit the planet. Mother Jones Econundrums sometimes puncture the inflated claims of the companies that exaggerate their environmental benefits. Those are my favorite Econundrums.

Grade-worthy Example 2

Electric cars make me furious, for example, because their manufacturers pretend exhaust pipe emissions are the only measure of a car’s environmental impact, conveniently ignoring the damage done to the planet by producing the electricity in the first place, a huge percentage of which is lost to transmission line inefficiency before it ever gets to the car.

The sentence could be better phrased, but it’s certainly not as clumsy at the bloated paragraph it represents, which takes way too much space to spell out the same claims:

The Unworthy Bloated Paragraph it Came From

Electric car manufacturers claim that their cars are environmentally friendly. They claim that they cause less environmental damage than cars that burn gasoline. They support that claim by measuring only the amount of environmentally-damaging exhaust that gasoline engines emit when they’re driven. It’s true that their electric cars don’t emit gasses, but they are wrong to claim that exhaust gasses are the only way to measure environmental impact. The electricity required to power their cars is not environmentally clean because it can’t be produced in the first place without damaging the planet in some way. What’s more, a huge percentage of the electricity generated at power plants is lost in the miles of transmission wires from the plant to the charging station before it ever gets into the car. Therefore, claims that electric cars are cleaner than gasoline engine vehicles make me furious.

As I did at the close of the first Grade Levels post, I invite you to respond here if this is helpful, or if you feel the need for additional samples, better models, or even revised versions of your own paragraphs before or after you’ve posted them. If I can model better writing for you, I’ll be happy to try.