I draw your attention to two documents.  

The U. S. Constitution states that “We*” created the constitution for purposes; the third purpose is to “insure domestic tranquility*.”  If we fear to go to public places, where is the assured domestic tranquility?

The Declaration of Independence states that we have “unalienable rights**” and among these are “Life**” and “the pursuit of Happiness.**”  What is more important?  The right to live that has been taken from many; the right to pursue happiness that has been diminished for many others; or the right of one crazed fanatic to have guns to take the rights of life and the pursuit of happiness from many others?

Let the crazed ones have knives, but for the sake of the lives and happiness and domestic tranquility of the rest of us, don’t let them have automatic weapons.

*We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice,* insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.--United States Constitution

**We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed--The Declaration of Independence

The above is a letter to the editor that I sent to the New York Times in reply to an article by David Brooks about gun control subsequent to the Aurora, CO, shootings.  The letter was evidently not chosen to be published, so I am publishing it on my blog.  It is time to eliminate automatic weapons as an available option for people to buy.

Tiki-Taka-Zoom!

(For La Roja in the Euro finals)

I gasp once

The slicing starts, for

I had never seen

The cuts and seams

Of such a team.

I could only begin

Questions because

The answer’s given:

Silver streak passes,

Diamond touches,

Ruby red marks,

Golden goalie—

And the orb

In elliptic ballistics

Pearls into the bejeweled

Box.  I gasp again—

At the end—for

My senses are

Sated with gems.

7/3-8/2012

If you are a soccer fan, this poem needs no explanation.  If you are not, you might not understand the almost magical quality of the Spanish team's play:  It was astoundingly good, better than I had seen any other team play against such worthy competition.  Those Spanish players will become legends of the sport.

I have edited this poem several times.  I did it again on July 8, changing lines 12, 14, and 15.

BUSINESS WRITING

The case of the mixed-up mogul.

You have just started your own music business as artist, editor, and publisher with your parents’ backing because you needed your parents’ credit (their house is collateral) and acquiescence in order to set up a studio in their garage.  You know you will have to pay for whatever you buy because you don’t want your parents to lose their home through your defaulting on the loans for your studio equipment.  You use the $10,000 loan to buy a cheap startup mixer and recorders with microphones, soundproofing for the garage, and chairs and stools enough for bands and entourage.  You also buy a box full of sheet music at a close-out sale of a local music store (the elderly proprietor had passed away) because it is cheap.

While looking through the box, you find handwritten lyrics without any music. As you read the lyrics, a tune enters your head and you think you have the beat and melody for a good song based on the lyrics.  You’ve never heard this song before and wonder who wrote it.  When you turn over the paper, you find this handwritten notation: “2Pac 9/11/86.”  You are positive the song could be a hit, but now you have a dilemma: should you credit Tupac Shakur—the notation is not necessarily proof that he wrote the song.

After your equipment is delivered the next week, you take it out of the boxes and set it up, but as you are doing so, you realize something is wrong.  You check the invoice that you have signed for receiving the equipment and the invoice lists exactly what you ordered.  However, what you see before you is the most expensive Bose mixer and recorder, luxury stools and chairs, plus stands and microphones.  Somehow your order got mixed up with someone else’s.  You could keep it and start a very classy studio, but the invoice that you ordered was for $2,120.  The equipment you received is worth at least $7,000, maybe $10,000.

You are a believer in divine command theory, and it seems as if God wants you to succeed.  You ponder whether these events are a sign from God that you should move forward to success.  You remember a proverb: “God helps those who help themselves.”

What should you do?

• 1.       Report the mix-up to the music company, so they can pick up the top-quality stuff and replace it with what you really ordered.
• 2.       Use the equipment until the company sends you what you ordered.
• 3.       Don’t tell anyone, including your parents, about the delivery mix-up.  Your parents don’t know anything about music and won’t notice the error.
• 4.       Consult an attorney about what to do with the equipment and the song you found.
• 5.       Ask your parents for more credit because now that you have the better equipment, you want to keep it.
• 6.       Consult a music expert to see if the handwritten note is Tupac’s handwriting.
• 7.       Put the page of handwritten song for sale on EBay to see if it could fetch enough money to cover the high-end equipment.
• 8.       Ignore all the complications:  start your studio, write the music for the found lyrics, practice the song and record it and claim it as yours.  It’s all finders, keepers; losers, weepers.
• 9.       One of the “Ten Commandments” is “Thou shalt not steal.”  But you wonder whether taking advantage of others’ carelessness is really stealing.  This seems more like finding a sack full of money.
• 10.   Find Tupac’s heirs and offer to sell the lyrics to them.

In a brief essay, explain your choices and why you made them.

BUSINESS WRITING

The case of the income distribution dilemma.

You are the manager of a bottle manufacturing plant that produces bottles of varied sizes and shapes on specified orders from other corporations.  Because of a recent recession during which the demand for bottles decreased, you are considering laying off 30 percent of your workers, nearly a thousand people.  The plant is located in a small city and is one of the chief employers in the community.  A recent article in the local newspaper claimed that your plant was directly responsible for the incomes of 30 percent of the community and indirectly for another 20 percent of people who depended on your workers spending their paychecks in local businesses and for local services.

As an advocate of utilitarianism, you are troubled by the impending layoffs and hope to find a way that might ease the crisis.  Your dilemma is this: Your corporate overseers have told you to cut payroll costs by 30 percent and have suggested that the easiest route to that goal is layoffs.  Meanwhile, the leader of the local union has got wind of the coming crisis and is threatening a shutdown of the plant if layoffs go so high.  If the union does that, you’ll have to hire and retrain replacements whose processing and training will cancel the savings of the layoff.

What should you do?

• 1.       Refuse to lay off anyone, risking your own termination by the corporation.
• 2.       Bite the bullet: lay off 30 percent of your workers, the simplest solution.
• 3.       Negotiate with the union leader, telling him that if the remaining workers will take a 15 percent cut in pay, you will lay off only 15 percent of the workers. That way, the crunch won’t be felt as hard by the community.
• 4.       Call all of your client companies, begging them to place orders for bottles.
• 5.       Raise the price of the bottles 15 percent to cover some of the costs not covered by sales.
• 6.       Lower the price of the bottles 15 percent to generate more sales.
• 7.       Discuss with your management team taking a 15 percent cut in salary to show goodwill with the workers.  If everyone sacrifices, the workers will be more willing to go along.
• 8.       Raise the union’s share of paying for health and life insurance.
• 9.   Cancel all holiday and vacation pay.

In a brief essay, explain your choices and why you made them.

BUSINESS WRITING

The case of the rapacious lender.

You are a loan officer in a bank.  The president of the bank wants more loans, more mortgages, more credit cards sold.  He has raised the commission on all these financial tools and has promised bonuses to the top sellers; in addition, he has placed ads promoting these products in local newspapers and TV stations.  Furthermore, as a leading officer, you know you are in line for a promotion to vice president if you make lots of sales.

Potential customers stream into the bank the next week.  You are busy every day processing loans, mortgages, and credit card applications.  Many of the customers don’t have good credit, but are allowed to take out risky mortgages at high interest rates, car loans with little down, and credit cards with high fees and interest rates.  You know that many of these customers will fail to cover their loans, so the bank will be able to repossess the homes and cars, and freeze the credit cards, and take out liens against their possessions, leaving the borrowers destitute and in need of government assistance.

You have always practiced egoism, which allows you to do anything that gets you ahead.  You believe in caveat emptor (let the buyer beware).  You are looking forward to the increased commissions, the fat bonus, and the promotion to vice president.

What should you do?

1. 1.       Explain to the president how risky the loans are and the damage he will probably be doing to the community.
2. 2.       Warn the customers away from taking on more than they can afford.
3. 3.       Accept the commission, but give the bonus to a local charity that takes care of homeless people.
4. 4.       Refuse to process any unreasonable loan.
5. 5.       You only live once: go for broke, get the high commission, take the bonus, and accept the promotion.  How the customers handle the loans is not your problem.
6. 6.       Decline the promotion because you can’t help manage a bank that pillages working class people.
7. 7.       Resign from the bank immediately.
8. 8.       On Thanksgiving, give turkeys to all your customers who owe $50,000 or more to the bank.
9. 9.       Start lining up all the things that you will buy with the extra money you’ll be making: (1) new car, (2) new clothes, (3) new landscaping.  Besides the money will trickle back down to auto workers, textile workers, and lawn maintenance workers.
10. 10.   After the money comes in, take a long vacation and forget about the misery you will have had a hand in creating.

In a brief essay, explain your choices and why you made them.

BUSINESS WRITING

The case of the inspired genius and the idiot savant.

You are the newly appointed supervisor of a data-entry section of a pharmaceutical company.  You have two shifts with 24 data-entry clerks on each shift.  Your company has a competitive research and development department that is involved in creating and testing drugs; most of the data entry concerns entering the data from experiments with the drugs and testing of the drugs.  Accuracy is paramount; speed is desirable.

Most of your clerks are graduates of for-profit technical schools and have certificates in computer literacy and keyboarding.  Their keyboarding speeds are between 30 and 45 words per minute, although a few can type 60 words a minute.  To make up for absences and resignations, you often use a temp agency to fill in the 24 data-entry stations.  One day, two of the temps prove to be exceptional.  One is an idiot savant with nimble fingers and a gift for remembering lines of data that would be meaningless to anyone else.  He routinely types 100 words a minute and never makes a mistake.  His only fault is that he doesn’t keep track of time and has to be told to take breaks and to keep away from the machines during that time.  The other is a young woman with a genius IQ.  She is shy but is a friend of the idiot savant, and they always sit in adjoining cubicles.  She can type 80 words a minute and is such a fast reader and a perfectionist double-checker that if she makes a mistake, she immediately notices it and corrects it.  However, she is inspired to create virtual reality fantasy games, and if an inspiration penetrates her consciousness, she feels compelled to sketch the idea on the computer.  Between the two of them, they produce as much work as any five of the other employees.

You have succeeded in your job because you are a strict nonconsequentialist; for you “a rule is a rule” and you expect everyone to abide by the rules. You are famous for enforcing time and work proscriptions.  You have a problem because your two most productive clerks are not following the rules.  The idiot savant misses breaks and end times and is on the clock for more than the prescribed 32 hours a week for temps.  Meanwhile, the genius sometimes passes some of her work to her friend so she can create fantasy game sketches which she saves to a flash drive that none of the clerks are supposed to bring into the area for corporate security reasons.  You know that if one temp is forced out, the other will go, too.

What should you do?

• 1.        Find a way to make the savant time conscious and the genius comply with the rule that clerks cannot use their computers for unassigned personal work or pass assigned work to another clerk without your approval.
• 2.       Provide rewards for their compliance with the rules: candies and cookies.
• 3.       Request the temp agency not to send them again because they will never fit into your system.
• 4.       Get some of your more dependable regular employees to apply peer pressure and act as mentors to the two temps in order to have them adjust to the company rules.
• 5.       Convince the savant to stay and provide an alarm watch that buzzes when he should take breaks and again when he should return from breaks and again when he should wrap up work for the day.  Let his friend go because she is uncontrollable.
• 6.       Begin the termination process as proscribed: 

a.       talk to the employees about their violation of rules;

b.      if they don’t comply, send them a warning memo;

c.       if the violations continue, send them a letter with copies to your department head and human resources;

d.      if the violations continue, let them go. 

You have done your duty.

• 7.       For the sake of productivity, ignore their violation of rules.  Pay the savant for the extra hours he works and let the genius sketch out her ideas and save them.  Although you will have violated your own standards, you will be rewarded for the increased productivity.
• 8.       Threaten to resign your position if those two continue to work for the company.
• 9.       Consult human resources and training and ask them to come up with a way to convince your two “stars” to comply with the rules.
• 10.   Explain the situation to the department head and ask for advice.

In a brief essay, explain your choices and why you made them.

Stoned Boss

BUSINESS WRITING

The case of the stoned boss.

You completed your degree in business, but because of the bad economy, the only job you can get is a manager trainee position with a convenience store chain.  You take the job because it will do two things for you: (1) it will pay your living expenses, so you can survive without going home to live with your parents; (2) it will give you real-world experience running a retail business that will pad your resume.

The store you are assigned to is in a poor neighborhood with high criminal activity, and you know that working there could be dangerous.  However, for the time being, you keep your cheap apartment near the university and take the bus to work (you have a car, but you don’t want to park it in that neighborhood).  You also bring your lunch because the only eateries near the store are fast food or ethnic-centered restaurants, and you are a health food advocate. 

You work hard and impress your boss, the store manager.  He tells you that you will probably succeed and advance within the company.

However, a few weeks after your starting there, you realize that your boss is a little loose with the rules.  He goes into an alley behind the store and smokes marijuana during his break time.  Although you know he is stoned for at least half of every shift, his performance doesn’t seem to be affected.  You also have seen him take sandwiches from the cooler, but have never seen him pay for the sandwiches.  In fact, he tells you that you can eat anything you want from the store as long as you keep track of the items, which can be deducted from your next paycheck.  You suspect that he doesn’t keep track of what he eats and just writes it off as shoplifting.  Once you caught him having sex with a woman from the neighborhood in the storage room.  He laughed off the incident.

You have always been a consequentialist, so as you think about your predicament—a new employee who knows that the boss is operating against company policy and doing something that is illegal—you worry about whether you should do anything or tell anyone else.  No one seems to be being harmed by the boss’s actions, although he sets a terrible example for the employees.  The store is popular in the neighborhood and sales are good.

1. What should you do?
2. Quit the job and accept dependence on your parents.
3. Report your boss’s degenerate behavior to his boss, the regional manager.
4. Begin having sex in the storage room, too.
5. Report your boss to the police.
6. Keep your mouth shut and do your job and hope for an early promotion.
7. Smoke marijuana with your boss.
8. Discuss your concerns with the boss.
9. Ask for a transfer to another store.
10. Accept the situation, realizing that upper management might know about your boss’s behavior, but because the store makes money for the corporation and getting a good manager for that particular store in a dangerous neighborhood is not easy, his behavior is overlooked.
11. Pig out at the store but don't report what you eat because no one cares anyway.

In a brief essay, explain your choices and why you made them.

Salacious Rumors

BUSINESS WRITING

The case of the salacious rumors.

You are the director of the graphic artists in the marketing department of an insurance company.  A recently hired employee is personable, industrious and quite attractive.  Although you are pleased with her work, you begin to hear rumors that she is bisexually promiscuous.  You ask your secretary if she has heard these rumors.  She says she has, but has heard no specific incidents discussed.  Later that same day, you overhear several employees talking about the new employee’s having been seen interacting with the vice president of the sales department.  From what you hear, the new employee had made salacious comments to the vice president.  At a meeting at the end of the week, you notice that the new employee is isolated from the other employees who either ignore her or look at her with disapproval or amusement.  You realize that the rumors are getting out of control and are affecting the morale of the department.

 

You practice a form of virtue ethics, so you are concerned about not only the conduct of this new employee but also her character.  You know that her sexual conduct is her business as long as it doesn’t disrupt the department or occur on company property.  However, you worry that her character may not be suitable for the conservative environment of an insurance company.  Nevertheless, you have no evidence that the rumors are true.

What should you do?

1. Call a department meeting to discuss the situation.
2. Dismiss the new employee since she is still in the probationary period of employment.
3. Reprimand the gossipers.
4. Ask the vice president of sales about his or her relationship with the new employee.
5. Confront the new employee.
6. Wait, investigate the situation, and then act if action seems necessary.
7. Consult the Human Resources Department to see what a counselor recommends.
8. Guide the new employee in choosing sexual partners.
9. Recommend the new employee be counseled in sexual behavior.
10. Discuss the situation with your department chairperson.
11. Write a memo to the new employee.

In a brief essay, explain your choices and why you made them.

EXPLANATION:

I recently attended a workshop on ethics, and from that experience, I have developed some writing assignments based on various ethical points of view.  This is the first. Feel free to borrow or develop your own ideas for writing assignments based on an ethical viewpoint.

A Night of Record Sex

Under Orgasmic Neon Lights

I became the blue boy

Krishna coming on earth,

And you were black Kali

Swathed in heat and fire,

In the guise of a cow girl.

The satyric door opened and closed;

The Olympian floods began—

Our bodies arching

Over time and reason

To pound and smooth

Ourselves into ecstasy.

We were all opened and entered,

Pushed and pulled, until

We became indistinguishable

From a tangle of night crawlers

Up gorged from plutonic depths.

Our energies flowed into each other

And accepted novice time

As perpetuity.

We had no clue

We were setting records

In a motel room

In Tallahassee

That one night

Of love forever.

September 2010

This is a tribute to a person who will remain unnamed although if she reads this, she will know the poem concerns her and one night we had together.  I haven't discussed the poem with her and do not feel I should name her without her consent.

By the way, I finished the mystery and it was published last month: Secret Partner.

Where have I been?

I haven't blogged for a while now because an idea for a new mystery novel came to me over the Christmas holidays.  Every time I sit down to write, my mind is immediately taken to the new novel.

I have written more than 25,000 words and am now on Chapter Eighteen, so it already qualifies as a novel, but I feel that I am about half way through.

The detective is the same: Buck Jaspers.  This mystery takes him to Central Florida, where he must solve three deaths that have occurred on the property of one man, his client.

Student-Teacher Interaction Results

REPORT ON STUDENT-TEACHER INTERACTIONS

IN INDEPENDENT STUDIES

BUSINESS ENGLISH AND BUSINESS WRITING CLASSES

By Jerry C. Blanton

Adjunct English Professor

Miami Dade College

The following tables show the student grades relative to the interaction between the teacher and the students in my Independent Studies Business English (OST1330) and Business Writing (OST2335) over two years (2010 and 2011). Table One shows the students listed in alphabetical order by semester with their grades and the number and types of interaction with the professor. The most common interactions were face-to-face meetings and email communications. Table Two shows the same statistics listed by grade, so it is more revealing. Note that “A” students have twice as many face-to-face interactions with the professor as they do emails (46 to 23); “B”, more emails than face-to-face interactions (32 to 43); “C”, almost reversed the percentages of the “A” students (17 to 30). Note that FAX communications, although significant in previous years, are nonexistent in the last two years—most likely due to the increased use of cell phones and the decreased use of line phones. (In fact, the last FAX that I received from a student was on October 22, 2009.)

TABLE ONE

OST1330/OST2335 STUDENT-TEACHER INTERACTION AND GRADE RESULTS

FALL 2011 IN PERSON FAX EMAIL TEL MAILBOX TOTAL GRADE  %

ND              8                   0       3            0      0                11          B            85

DG              1                   0       4             1     1                 7           C            71

JA               5                   0        2            0      1                 8          A             91

ID               3                   0        4            0       0                7          B             88

TT              1                    0        4            0      4                 9          D            61



SUM 2011 IN PERSON FAX EMAIL  TEL  MAILBOX TOTAL GRADE  %



HB            9                     0        2             0       1                12        B             84

JC             15                   0        0             0        0               15        A             91

AD            1                     0        10           0        0               11        B             83

ID             2                     0        6             0         0               8          D            60

OS            1                     0        9             0         1               11        B            84

CT            5                     0        2              0         2               9         A            90



SPG 2011 IN PERSON  FAX EMAIL    TEL MAILBOX TOTAL GRADE  %



YA            2                    0         3              0         0              5          D             60

ChaB         0                    0         3              0         2              5          F              33

CheB         0                    0         2              0         2              4          F              31

AD            2                    0         4              0         0              6          C              79

MT            2                    0         10            0         1              13        A              91

LD             5                    0         2              0         0              7          A              91

IS              3                     0         0              0         0              3          D              60

DW           5                     0         2              0         0              7          C              75



FALL 2010 IN PERSON FAX  EMAIL   TEL   MAILBOX TOTAL GRADE  %



AH           2                      0         7              0          0              9          B             80

MC          1                      0          8              0          2             11        C             74

LC           2                      0          4              0          0              6          B             81

AC          4                       0         0              0           0              4          C            70

AD          4                       0         0              0           0              4          B             83

JR           1                       0          1              0           0              2          F             13



SPG 2010 IN PERSON FAX   EMAIL      TEL      MAILBOX TOTAL GRADE  %



AG          2                       0           3            0            0              5          C            72

TJ            5                       0           1            0            0              6          D            56

SW         12                      0           1            0            0              13        A            95

SB           2                       0            6           0            0               8          A           92

SH           2                       0           4            0            2               8          B           88

DR           2                       0           9            0            0               11        C           78

VM          2                       0           7            1            0               10         D          60

TABLE TWO

OST1330/OST2335 STUDENT-TEACHER INTERACTION AND GRADE RESULTS ARRANGED BY GRADES

A's          IN PERSON FAX EMAIL TEL MAILBOX TOTAL GRADE  %




SW         12                  0      1            0       0                13         A            95


SB           2                   0       6           0       0                 8          A            92


MT          2                   0       10         0       1                 13        A            91


LD           5                   0       2           0       0                 7          A            91


JC           15                  0      0            0       0                15         A            91


CT           5                   0      2            0        2                9          A            90


JA            5                   0      2            0        1                9          A            91


TT  7       46                  0      23         0         4               73


AVG        6.5                 0      3           0        .5               10        A            92 (approximate)




B's          IN PERSON FAX EMAIL TEL MAILBOX TOTAL GRADE  %

ND         8                    0       3           0      0                11          B            85


ID           3                    0       4           0      0                7            B            88


HB          9                    0       2           0      1                12          B            84


AD          1                    0       10         0      0                11          B            83


OS          1                    0        9           0      1                11         B            84


AH          2                    0        7           0      0                9           B            80


LC          2                    0        4           0       0                6           B            81


AD          4                   0         0           0       0               4            B            83


SH          2                    0         4           0       2               8            B            88



TT 9       32                  0         43         0       4               79


AVG       3.5                 0        4.5         0      0                8           B            84



C's   IN PERSON FAX EMAIL TEL MAILBOX TOTAL GRADE %


DG   1                    0      4           1      1                 7            C           71


AD   2                    0      4           0      0                 6            C           79


DW   5                   0      2           0      0                 7            C           75


MC   1                   0      8           0      2                 11          C           74


AC    4                   0      0           0      0                 4            C           70


AG    2                   0      3           0      0                 5            C           72


DR    2                   0      9           0      0                 11          C            78


TT 7 17                 0       30         1     3                  51


AVG 2.5               0       4.5         0     0                  7           C            74


D's IN PERSON FAX EMAIL TEL MAILBOX TOTAL GRADE %


TT  1                   0       4           0      4                 9            D          61


ID   2                  0        6          0      0                  8            D          60


YA  2                  0        3          0      0                 5             D          60


IS    3                  0        0          0      0                 3             D          60


TJ    5                  0        1          0      0                6              D          56


VM  2                  0        7         1       0               10             D          60


TT 6 15               0        21        1       4               41


AVG 2.5              0        3.5       0       .5             6.5            D          60


The statistics indicate that the more interaction a student has with the professor, the better the grade will be. Below are pie charts showing the grades achieved relative to the total average interactions with the professor (Chart One) and the average face-to-face interactions with the professor (Chart Two) and the total face-to-face interactions (Chart Three). More important than any other type of interaction, face-to-face interaction between the professor and student seems to be significant in determining a higher grade.

CONCLUSION
These statistics emphasize the value of student-teacher interaction. Most students who have interacted face to face with me multiple times have typically sought clarification for assignments and affirmation of their formatting and/or competence. Therefore, with the added guidance, these students submit higher quality work formatted efficiently and clearly.

The implication is that the professor should encourage the students to meet with him or her face to face at least once every two weeks. These person-to-person meetings are valuable mentoring sessions that guide the student to better performance.


December 25, 2011