Blog Posting #3 (due Sunday 2/14, 11:59 P.M.)

This week, we'll use the blog as a place to develop letters to the editor and improve each other's work. The required posting, thus, comes in two parts:

1) Identify, in a few sentences, the publication you're looking at (something local, in the Twin Cities area -- can be online or in print), the problem you see in the way science is being deployed there, and why you think it's a problem you think it's potentially dangerous or harmful enough to merit your time in addressing it. The point of writing this little meta-commentary, before writing the text of the letter itself, is to inform your colleagues about what you're trying to do, so they can best evaluate how well you did it.

2) Write a draft of your letter to the editor.

(For easy reference, here's the text from the assignment sheet: "Write a letter to the editor of that publication, in which you describe that problem, explain and analyze it, and propose a corrective. (Note: letters to the editor are, of course, for a general reading public. This is part of the challenge—how to communicate ideas such as semantic contagion, legitimation, biopolitics, and Cartesianism effectively, without using any jargon? And they are short­—150-200 words maximum!)")

Finally, in your comments this week, offer some suggestions to help your colleague improve their letters -- what can be clearer? how could the arguments be strengthened? how might something be worded better? Let's make these as good as they can be!