1.
Alfred A. Tomatis (1920-2001) was one of the first educational researchers to be interested in the "Mozart effect." Tomatis used the phrase to describe the increase in intellectual ability that supposedly occurs when children listen to the music of eighteenth-century composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Although for a while now, the media has celebrated the Mozart Effect as if it were proven fact, there is little hard evidence it exists. The idea that there really was such a thing as a Mozart Effect originated with physicist Gordon Shaw and learning researcher Frances Rauscher. Working with students from the University of California at Irvine, Rauscher and Shaw played Mozart to a few dozen subjects. Then they administered intelligence tests. The tests suggested a temporary increase in I.Q., which was attributed to the music listened to before testing. As a result of their work, Shaw and Rauscher have become famous. They are so well-known that they have founded their own institute, the Music Intelligence Neural Development Institute. The media, never quick to examine the scientific evidence for sensational claims, has made it seem as if belief in the Mozart Effect is widely shared by the scientific community. It isn’t. That’s because no one has ever been able to repeat Shaw and Rauscher’s results. (Source of information: Robert Todd Carroll. The Skeptic's Dictionary. New Jersey: Wiley, 2003, p.233)
Topic Sentence:
a. Alfred A. Tomatis (1920-2001) was one of the first educational researchers to be interested in the "Mozart effect."
b. Tomatis used the phrase to describe the increase in intellectual development that supposedly occurs when children listen to the music of eighteenth-century composer Wolfgang Mozart.
c. Although for a while now, the media has celebrated the Mozart Effect as if it were a proven fact, it turns out that there is little hard evidence it exists.
2.
When Kentucky Derby winner, Barbaro, shattered his leg at the start of the Preakness Stakes in 2006, everyone in horse racing appeared stunned. Barbaro, a two-year-old racing wonder, had been expected to win. Instead he suffered irreparable injuries and had to withdraw. Yet when one considers the damage racing inflicts on young horses, it’s hard to imagine why everyone, from the owners to the fans, seemed so shocked. Horse racing is a dangerous and deadly sport for the horses, no matter how eager and spirited the animals might look at the starting gate. According to Susan Stover, a horse veterinarian at the University of California at Davis, horses sustain fatal injuries in 1.5 of every 1000 starts. The only wonder is that they do not suffer more injuries. These are young horses, whose bodies undergo almost unimaginable stress. As Jim Orsini, who treated Barbaro pointed out, "...at high speed, a horse’s leg bones can actually deform, and keep deforming until they or the ligaments or tendons eventually fail." Orsini ought to know. He is a professional horse surgeon. He works at Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center, where Barbaro was sent to recover. Add to the stress of regular racing the fact that race horses are bred to be thin-boned—the thin bones help them break out from the starting gate more quickly—and you have a recipe for disaster. No wonder, Elliot Katz, a former veterinarian and president of In Defense of Animals, a San-Francisco-based animal-rights group, calls horse racing a "killer sport." (Source of information: Alfred Lubrano. "Horse Racing is Still Saddled by Cruelty Issue." Philadelphia Inquirer , May 27, 2006, p.10)
Topic Sentence:
a. When Kentucky Derby winner, Barbaro, shattered his leg at the start of the Preakness Stakes in 2006, everyone in horse racing appeared stunned.
b. Horse racing is a dangerous and deadly sport for the horses, no matter how eager and spirited the animals might look at the starting gate.
c. According to Susan Stover, a horse veterinarian at the University of California at Davis, horses sustain fatal injuries in 1.5 of every 1000 starts.
3.
Mount Everest, the towering mountain located between the two countries of Tibet and Nepal, is Earth’s highest point above sea level. The mountain’s challenging and awe-inspiring height is one reason why so many people have been obsessed by the desire to climb it and died trying. In 1924, British explorers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine cheerily set off to climb Everest’s heights, disappeared from view, and were never seen again. Mallory’s body was discovered in 1999, but there was no indication of whether or not he had made it to the top. Since that time, it’s estimated that around 2,000 climbs have been attempted with 180 people dying as a result. The worse year for deaths was 1996, when twelve people lost their lives while trying to summit. The next year was not much better. Eight people died trying to reach Everest’s icy peak. Most recently, in May of 2006, a New Zealander named David Sharp made it to the top in his third summit attempt, but he died of cold and oxygen deprivation around 1,000 feet into his descent. (Source of information:www.factmonster.com/spot/everest2.html)
Topic Sentence:
a. Mount Everest, the towering mountain located between the two countries of Tibet and Nepal, is Earth’s highest point above sea level.
b. The mountain’s challenging and awe-inspiring height is one reason why so many people have been obsessed by the desire to climb it and died trying.
c. In 1924, British explorers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine cheerily set off to climb Everest’s height, disappeared from view, and were never seen again.
4.
In 1974, Congress passed the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Also known as the Buckley amendment, the new legislation specified who was allowed to view student records. The Buckley amendment also defined the conditions under which the records might be seen. Not surprisingly, parents of school-age children were the biggest winners from the passage of the amendment, which gave them access to their children’s records and evaluations. Previously they had been kept from seeing the official judgments that so powerfully affected their children’s lives. For example, prior to the new legislation, parents had not been allowed to see paperwork justifying why children were held back or placed in a special education class. After the legislation was passed, any school denying parents the right to review their children’s records could lose federal funding.
Topic Sentence:
a. In 1974, Congress passed the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
b. Also known as the Buckley amendment, the new legislation specified who was allowed to view student records.
c. Not surprisingly, parents of school-age children were the biggest winners from the passage of the Buckley amendment, which gave them access to their children’s records and evaluations.
5.
Web logs, or as they are more commonly known, "blogs" regularly record in cyberspace the personal and political views of the people who post them. To hear diehard bloggers tell it, their regular, sometimes daily, postings have brought about a cultural revolution. Whether the blogger is conservative or progressive, the message seems to be the same: Traditional news sources are no longer of interest. People are getting their news from blogs instead. While there is some small truth to that claim, it’s still pretty obvious that newspapers continue to sell and that many Americans still watch the nightly news. However, that’s not to say that bloggers haven’t had a powerful impact. On the contrary, blogs have enormously enlarged public access to information about key current events. For instance, in 2004, it was a blogger who proclaimed, correctly as it turned out, that a news story about George W. Bush’s national guard record was based on doctored evidence. In another incident that showed blogger ingenuity, book editor Russ Kick beat out experienced journalists after he read that the U.S. military was clamping down on press photos of coffins arriving in the states from Iraq. Outraged by what he saw as censorship, Kick immediately filed a Freedom of Information Act request. As a result of his request, Kick got a CD from the air force showing photos of the coffins coming home. He then posted the photos on his web log to the embarrassment of members of the national press, who were forced to beat a path to his door. No one among conventional news journalists had thought to ask whether the military had pictures. It took a blogger to do it. (Source of information: http://www.federalrepublic.net/?p=21; http://www.time.com/time/personoftheyear/2004/poymoments.html)
Topic Sentence:
a. Web logs or, as they are more commonly known, "blogs" regularly record in cyberspace the personal and political views of the people who post them.
b. Whether the blogger is conservative or progressive, the message seems to be the same: Traditional news sources are no longer of interest.
c. On the contrary, blogs have enormously enlarged public access to information about key current events.