ESSAY : ARGUMENT TOIPCS

1. The following appeared in a memo from the mayor of the town of Hopewell.
"Two years ago, the town of Ocean View built a new municipal golf course and resort hotel. During the past two years, tourism in Ocean View has increased, new businesses have opened there, and Ocean View's tax revenues have risen by 30 percent. The best way to improve Hopewell's economy, and generate additional tax revenues, is to build a golf course and resort hotel similar to those in Ocean View."

2. The following appeared in a newspaper feature story.
"At the small, nonprofit hospital in the town of Saluda, the average length of a patient's stay is two days; at the large, for-profit hospital in the nearby city of Megaville, the average patient stay is six days. Also, the cure rate among patients in the Saluda hospital is about twice that of the Megaville hospital. The Saluda hospital has more employees per patient than the hospital in Megaville, and there are few complaints about service at the local hospital. Such data indicate that treatment in smaller, nonprofit hospitals is more economical and of better quality than treatment in larger, for-profit hospitals."

3. Thirteen years ago, researchers studied a group of 25 infants who showed signs of mild distress when exposed to unfamiliar stimuli such as an unusual odor or a tape recording of an unknown voice. They discovered that these infants were more likely than other infants to have been conceived in early autumn, a time when their mothers' production of melatonin — a hormone known to affect some brain functions — would naturally increase in response to decreased daylight. In a follow-up study conducted earlier this year, more than half of these children — now teenagers — who had shown signs of distress identified themselves as shy. Clearly, increased levels of melatonin before birth causeshyness during infancy and this shyness continues into later life.