When win-argument pedagogy is a loss for the composition classroom

Despite the effort educators put into developing in students the critical writing and thinking skills needed to compose effective arguments, undergraduate college students are often accused of churning out essays lacking in creative and critical thought, arguments too obviously formulated and with sides too sharply drawn. Theories abound as to why these deficiencies are rampant. Some blame students’ immature cognitive and emotional development for these lacks. Others put the blame of lackadaisical output on the assigning of shopworn writing subjects, assigned topics such as on American laws and attitudes about capital punishment and abortion. Although these factors might contribute to faulty written output in some cases, the prevailing hindrance is our very pedagogy, a system in which students are rewarded for composing the very type of argument we wish to avoid — the eristic, in which the goal is not truth seeking, but successfully disputing another’s argument. Certainly the eristic argument is the intended solution in cases when a clear‑cut outcome is needed, such as in legal battles and political campaigns when there can only be one winner. However, teaching mainly or exclusively the eristic, as is done in most composition classrooms today, halts the advancement of these higher‑order inquiry skills we try developing in our students

Albiglutide and cardiovascular outcomes in patients with type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease (Harmony Outcomes): a double-blind, randomised placebo-controlled trial

Background: Glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists differ in chemical structure, duration of action, and in their effects on clinical outcomes. The cardiovascular effects of once-weekly albiglutide in type 2 diabetes are unknown. We aimed to determine the safety and efficacy of albiglutide in preventing cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, or stroke. Methods: We did a double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trial in 610 sites across 28 countries. We randomly assigned patients aged 40 years and older with type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease (at a 1:1 ratio) to groups that either received a subcutaneous injection of albiglutide (30–50 mg, based on glycaemic response and tolerability) or of a matched volume of placebo once a week, in addition to their standard care. Investigators used an interactive voice or web response system to obtain treatment assignment, and patients and all study investigators were masked to their treatment allocation. We hypothesised that albiglutide would be non-inferior to placebo for the primary outcome of the first occurrence of cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, or stroke, which was assessed in the intention-to-treat population. If non-inferiority was confirmed by an upper limit of the 95% CI for a hazard ratio of less than 1·30, closed testing for superiority was prespecified. This study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT02465515. Findings: Patients were screened between July 1, 2015, and Nov 24, 2016. 10 793 patients were screened and 9463 participants were enrolled and randomly assigned to groups: 4731 patients were assigned to receive albiglutide and 4732 patients to receive placebo. On Nov 8, 2017, it was determined that 611 primary endpoints and a median follow-up of at least 1·5 years had accrued, and participants returned for a final visit and discontinuation from study treatment; the last patient visit was on March 12, 2018. These 9463 patients, the intention-to-treat population, were evaluated for a median duration of 1·6 years and were assessed for the primary outcome. The primary composite outcome occurred in 338 (7%) of 4731 patients at an incidence rate of 4·6 events per 100 person-years in the albiglutide group and in 428 (9%) of 4732 patients at an incidence rate of 5·9 events per 100 person-years in the placebo group (hazard ratio 0·78, 95% CI 0·68–0·90), which indicated that albiglutide was superior to placebo (p<0·0001 for non-inferiority; p=0·0006 for superiority). The incidence of acute pancreatitis (ten patients in the albiglutide group and seven patients in the placebo group), pancreatic cancer (six patients in the albiglutide group and five patients in the placebo group), medullary thyroid carcinoma (zero patients in both groups), and other serious adverse events did not differ between the two groups. There were three (<1%) deaths in the placebo group that were assessed by investigators, who were masked to study drug assignment, to be treatment-related and two (<1%) deaths in the albiglutide group. Interpretation: In patients with type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, albiglutide was superior to placebo with respect to major adverse cardiovascular events. Evidence-based glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists should therefore be considered as part of a comprehensive strategy to reduce the risk of cardiovascular events in patients with type 2 diabetes. Funding: GlaxoSmithKline

An examination of argumentation in undergraduate composition textbooks

This dissertation describes an investigation of the practice of teaching argumentation in the undergraduate composition classroom in large part by examining a corpus consisting of 16 commonly used argumentation textbooks with publication dates from 2010 to 2014. The purpose of this project is to help advance the teaching of written argumentation by examining how it is defined, justified, and taught via textbooks, by ranking the textbooks on a 1-3 sliding scale according to how well the lesson plans within them are equipped to teach students how to write arguments according to what the authors and publishers describe as the ideal argument. This study is conducted in two phases: The first is a process in which the textbooks are categorized into one of three types, or uses, of argumentation (academic/professional, advocacy, or exploration). The second phase is the evaluation of two chapters in each book to see how well the activities in them are developed as to help student learn to write the classified argument. The final chapter of this dissertation contains recommendations that can be adapted by future textbooks authors, editors, and publishers, recommendations that involve developing books that more clearly identify with one or more of the three categories making up this taxonomy, as well as adding sections that teach students to use a stasis-mapping formula to evaluate existing, as well as to create new, arguments

From perversion to synthesis

This collection of short fiction draws upon Theodor Adomo's claim that "[p]erspectives must be fashioned that displace and estrange the world, reveal it to be, with its rifts and crevices, as indigent and distorted as it will appear one day in the messianic light" (Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life 247) meaning that, to raise compassion and to reach higher levels of awareness, we must step outside ourselves so that we can give ourselves a critical look from the other side. In particular, the stories in this compilation center around the perversion of addiction in several arrangements-alcoholism, intense involvement with internet social networking sites, obsessive compulsive routines and abnormal fascination with paranormal activities. I hope to achieve a state of synthesis in my deep exploration of perverse addictions, following leading French psychoanalyst Janine Chesseguet Smirgle's insistence that "perversion is one of the essential ways and means [man] applies in order to push the frontiers of what is possible and to unsettle reality" (Creativity and Perversion 1)