Phil - California State University, Northridge



Phil. 100: General Logic

Prof. Hale/Fall 2009

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT #4:

Is an argument present?

General Instructions: You may work in groups on this assignment, and you may turn in group work. Each problem is worth 1 point, so this homework assignment is worth 20 points. Due: at the start of class on Thursday, September 10, 2009

Specific Instructions: There are twenty passages on this homework assignment. Ten of them contain arguments and ten do not. Determine which are which. Just write "Argument" on one side of the page and under that list by number the passages that have arguments, then on the other side of the page write "No Argument" and under that list by number the passages that don't have arguments.

Hint: This assignment is modeled after Practice Problems Sets 1-7, 1-8, 1-9, and 1-10, so it would be a good idea to look back at your answers to them.

Problems:

1. Black tights and a black bag make a summery dress and pumps that much more versatile. [Katherine Power, quoted in “What I'll Be Wearing,” Lucky (March 2007), p. 288.]

2. …[C]lose to one-third of the kids living in America’s most violent urban neighborhoods have posttraumatic stress disorder – nearly twice the rate reported for troops returning from Iraq. [Celeste Fremon, G-Dog and the Homeboys: Father Greg Boyle and the Gangs of East Los Angeles, updated and expanded ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008), p. 301.]

3. Last week, the Bush administration official in charge of convening military commissions at Guantanamo told that a Saudi national, Mohammed al-Qahtani, had been tortured in U.S. custody and, therefore, could not be prosecuted…. [“Obama Must Right the Wrongs,” Editorial, Los Angeles Times, January 18, 2009.]

4. An argument that police said began over a debt left a man dead on a northwest Houston street Saturday night. [“Argument Leaves Man Dead in Northwest Houston, HPD Says,” Houston Chronicle, March 2, 2008.]

5. Since the late 1980s, Nike has been telling us, “Just Do It!” [“Bodywise: Got 10 minutes? We’ve got a radically fun, totally painless plan to get you in shape – inside and out,” O (September 2008), 192.]

6. Note: The speaker is a fictional character called Nakata.

…[E]ver since I was little people said You’re dumb, you’re dumb, so I suppose I must be. [Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore, translated by Philip Gabriel (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), p. 45.]

7. At some schools, such as Duke and Columbia, select master's programs are entirely online. [Candice Choi, “Want to Get a Degree Online? Get Ready to Work Just as Hard,” Washington Post, February 1, 2009.]

8. Wal-Mart is the world's largest retailer and as such, now dictates policy to their suppliers. [Dave Gibson, “It Should Now Be Called Cheap, Slave Labor Day,” Virginia Beach Conservative Examiner, September 7, 2009.]

9. Gramps had left the furniture business to become a life insurance agent, but as he was unable to convince himself that people needed what he was selling and was sensitive to rejection, the work went badly. [Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father. (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1995), p. 55.]

10. A teacher's work – as any teacher can (and will) tell you – is never done. [Eric E. Rofes, Socrates, Plato, and Guys Like Me: Confessions of a Gay Schoolteacher. (Boston: Alyson Publications, 1985), p. 67.]

11. If mom’s not happy then I’m not happy. [CSUN junior deaf studies major Vania Ellison, quoted in Jacquelyn C. Hampton, “Spotlight: One Student Out of 36,000,” Daily Sundial (California State University, Northridge), September 1, 2009.]

12. The bathroom should have lighting as good as the dermatologist's office. This is one easy way to avoid hairy ears and melanomas. [Glenn O'Brien, “Intelligent Design,” GQ (June 2006), p. 149.]

13. Soviet Russia was never an ally. Germany's war on Russia coincided, more or less, with our war on Germany and the Russians were ready and willing to take advantage of that situation. We gave them $11,000,000,000 of land-lease and we shipped them airplanes and tanks and machinery. But they never coordinated [with us]…. They blackmailed us at Teheran and Yalta…. Only enemies … act that way. [George E. Sokolsky, New York Daily Mirror (December 6, 1947), quoted in Victor S. Navasky, Naming Names. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2003), p. 153.]

14. Angels Flight – Funicular (a short cable railway), running up to California Plaza from the corner of Fourth and Hill Streets. On December 31, 1901, the counterbalanced cars, Olivet and Sinai, began carrying people from Third and Hill Streets in the downtown commercial district up the steep hill to their Victorian homes and residential hotels. Built by engineer J. W. Eddy and modified a bit in the first few years, Angels Flight served the public at a penny a ride until the 1910s when the fare was raised to a nickel. It was dismantled and put into storage in 1969 when all the buildings on the top of Bunker Hill had been bulldozed away. In February 24, 1996 this "shortest railroad in the world" was refitted to the hill one-half block south from where it had been operated for sixty-eight years and reopened to the public. [Robert D. Herman, Downtown Los Angeles: A Walking Guide, rev. ed. (Baldwin Park, California: Gem Guides Book Company, 2000), p. 61.]

15. Noodles represent the hearty folk cuisine of Japan, and are never included in a formal meal. Anyone in search of a quick, cheap and nourishing meal will very probably go to a noodle shop, for there are more noodle shops than any other kind of restaurant in Japan. You can even devour a steaming bowl of noodles standing up in a station. [Lesley Downer and Minoru Yoneda, Step by Step Japanese Cooking. (Woodbury, New York: Barron's, 1986), p. 172.]

16. Azusa

Despite comedian Jack Benny's joke that the name means "everything from A to Z in the USA," it is most likely derived from the Gabrielino Indian word asuksagna, meaning "skunk place." As early as the 1850s, the town was a jumping-off point for those who caught gold fever and headed up Azusa Canyon in a mini gold rush. Developer Jonathan Sayre Slauson discovered another kind of gold when he subdivided the area during the 1887 land boom. [Cecilia Rasmussen, “What's in a Name? Clues to a City's Past,” Los Angeles Times, June 3, 2007.]

17. La Puente (1956)

This name came from the handiwork of 18th century explorers with the Gaspar de Portola expedition. They built a bridge, or puente, to help their livestock cross the muddy arroyo.

The bridge, long since gone, became the city’s motif – and its grammatically incorrect namesake. “Bridge” is a masculine noun in Spanish and takes the masculine article “el”; feminine nouns get “la.” So the name should be El Puente. [Cecilia Rasmussen, “Bad Grammar and More Quirks of City Names,” Los Angeles Times, July 22, 2007.]

18. The wide boulevard paralleling the [train] tracks is full of Vietnamese men in army fatigues. Most are obviously no longer in the armed forces despite the fact that they are still in uniform. There are soldiers astride motorbike taxis. Soldiers pedaling cyclos. Soldiers sitting and drinking in cafés. Suddenly very nervous, I go directly to the first inn I see and take a room. I ask the owner about the soldiers in the street. She chuckles and says almost every male over sixteen has served in the army. Many wear their uniforms as a sign of patriotism, but mostly because the uniforms, often sold as army surplus, double well as durable work clothes. [Andrew X. Pham, Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam. (New York: Picador, 1999), p. 219.]

19. Many of my earliest memories of the 1930s involve the virulent anti-Semitism in the world at that time. I am not just speaking of what was happening in Hitler’s Germany. I am speaking of what was very much happening here in America as well. I am Jewish, and my public schooling in Scranton, Pennsylvania, was filled with anti-Semitic events. For example, in fourth grade there was a kid who almost every day during recess would come up to me and call me “kike,” “moneylender,” “Christ killer,” and other prejudicial slurs. I would go over to him and call him Hitler, and we would start fighting with each other. The teachers always just told us to stop fighting. They did nothing about the anti-Semitism that they surely heard. I learned that I had to defend myself – not many others were stepping forward to offer help. [Ira L. Reiss, An Insider’s View of Sexual Science Since Kinsey. (Lanham, Massachusetts: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006), p. 2.]

20. Hominy is dried corn treated chemically – traditionally and preferably with wood ash lye – to remove the husk and germ. If it is dried again and ground, it is grits…. The only ways you will get an approximation of this formerly important staple will be to start with the dried corn and treat it yourself or buy it canned. In most major northern cities with large black populations, the canned product is readily available. It is also found in Latin American markets, for hominy is integral to the widely popular Mexican stew called pozole. I suppose it is an acquired taste, but having acquired it so long ago, I find few foods as satisfying. Usually it is served hot and buttered, but its wonderfully neutral background seems wasted. I much prefer it "panned," as southerners say, with bacon, scallions, and mushrooms. Each element should retain its individual flavor and texture, playing out many variations on a stable theme. [Bill Neal, Bill Neal's Southern Cooking. (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1985), p. 86.]

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