“Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war and until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation, until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes. And until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race, there is war. And until that day, the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship, rule of international morality, will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained... now everywhere is war. And until the ignoble and unhappy regimes that hold our brothers in Angola, in Mozambique, South Africa sub-human bondage Have been toppled, utterly destroyed Well, everywhere is war, me say war War in the east, war in the west War up north, war down south War, war, rumours of war And until that day, the African continent Will not know peace, we Africans will fight We find it necessary and we know we shall win As we are confident in the victory Of good over evil"
The audience of this song is Jamaican Rastafarians who want to be repatriated to Africa. They are the people who are hoping to someday return to Ethiopia, but are just waiting for the violence and oppression in Africa to end.
This song is an argument for tolerance and equality. The first half of the song is quoted from Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia. Marley gets a lot of credibility among the Rastafarians because they believe that Selassie was God incarnate. God carries a lot of credibility, especially when he is saying something that affects all Jamaicans. Racial inequality is what forced them to America in the first place, where they were left on a small island. Rastafarians see themselves as Africans, and so they feel strongly about the struggles of their fellow Africans. Marley appeals to ethos and pathos about evenly throughout this song. He also relies on logic when he quotes Selassie as saying, in effect "Until [x] there will always be war." He says that war naturally follows certain circumstances. It is caused by hatred and holding one person superior to another. These are things that hardly need proving for this audience.
His audience already agrees with him, but that's ok. He was trying to popularize Selassie's words so that eventually everyone would know the message. Marley's goal was not to convince Europeans and Americans to stop colonizing Africa or anything like that. His goal was to raise awareness in his own country and to fuel the Rastafarian movement. I think it worked pretty well.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
FW: Frisbee story and a lecture
So my wife and I decided that it is finally spring (for real this time). On Monday, we put on our shorts and headed to the park across the street to toss a frisbee. It seemed like a fine thing to do. Our first few dates involved frisbees, and we haven't been able to play yet this year, so we looked forward to it all day. We were just starting to get back into the swing of things when I tossed it over the fence and into the road where it was immediately smashed by an oncoming convertible. We picked up the pieces and slowly walked to the dumpster. My wife poured in a handful of dirt on top of our frisbee, and we walked back home humming Amazing Grace. There is no moral to this story.
I went to a presentation this morning that featured Dr. Howard S. Becker, a renowned sociologist and jazz pianist. He gave a brief lecture on how to write better, specifically geared to writing in the social sciences. He had a lot of good things to say about how to revise a paper, and he said a lot about how to get started, and how to write clearly. But mostly what I remember is that he used "Invisible Cities" by Italo Calvino as an example of wonderful writing. He said that Calvino is "a winner", and that's good enough for me. The book is about Marco Polo and a fictional conversation he had with Kublai Khan. The great Khan asks Polo about the cities he has seen, and Polo begins to make up tales about strange and exotic cities. One of these cities is inhabited by a people that throw their garbage out on the street, and when it piles up too much, they leave and settle somewhere else. There are 55 stories, each 2-3 pages long, that describe lots of different cities. I think that sounds absolutely fascinating. It reminds me of Boccaccio's "The Decameron". Pretty interesting stuff. I'm a sucker for short stories, especially Italian ones. I might have to drop out of school so that I can read all these books that I never get around to. Sometimes I think the only way to get a really useful, well-rounded education is to drop out of college. But my wife would kill me, and I'd be next to that frisbee.
I went to a presentation this morning that featured Dr. Howard S. Becker, a renowned sociologist and jazz pianist. He gave a brief lecture on how to write better, specifically geared to writing in the social sciences. He had a lot of good things to say about how to revise a paper, and he said a lot about how to get started, and how to write clearly. But mostly what I remember is that he used "Invisible Cities" by Italo Calvino as an example of wonderful writing. He said that Calvino is "a winner", and that's good enough for me. The book is about Marco Polo and a fictional conversation he had with Kublai Khan. The great Khan asks Polo about the cities he has seen, and Polo begins to make up tales about strange and exotic cities. One of these cities is inhabited by a people that throw their garbage out on the street, and when it piles up too much, they leave and settle somewhere else. There are 55 stories, each 2-3 pages long, that describe lots of different cities. I think that sounds absolutely fascinating. It reminds me of Boccaccio's "The Decameron". Pretty interesting stuff. I'm a sucker for short stories, especially Italian ones. I might have to drop out of school so that I can read all these books that I never get around to. Sometimes I think the only way to get a really useful, well-rounded education is to drop out of college. But my wife would kill me, and I'd be next to that frisbee.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
TA: Laundry
What are the effects of doing laundry on general cleanliness?
My wife loves to clean. She is always trying to get all the dishes done because she loves the feeling of having a clean home. This is why she refuses to do laundry. Doing laundry might, at first thought, seem like a great way to sterilize your living conditions. But in reality, it can create such a mess that it is impossible to ever have a clean home again.
Think of what happens when your clothes get dirty. Many people toss them in a bin, and many other people toss them on the floor before crashing into bed. The dirty laundry needs to go somewhere, so most people then put it in the washing machine. While it's washing, you put on new clothes. This makes them dirty. So by the time you get your laundry done, you will still have dirty laundry that needs to be taken care of. This is the cyclical nature of clothing. You are never done with the task.
The major problem, however, doesn't come into play until the end of the drying cycle. Where do you put the clean laundry? Not in the same bin that you had all your dirty laundry in. Then you wouldn't have anywhere for your dirties. So you toss it on your bed, or on a clean part of the floor, or on the couch. Then the nightmare happens. You have to rush out the door because you're late for work (you knew you shouldn't have started in the first place, you knew this would happen. But you didn't have a single clean pair of socks...) and you leave your house with a big pile of clean laundry. How long does this pile last? It depends on how much you washed. It's tough to find time to fold so many clothes, so they sit there, on average, for two weeks. During this time, you pick up your clean clothes off the floor each morning as you get dressed, and before long, you've forgotten which socks are clean and which are dirty. After all, you have piled your unfolded clean clothes in the same place you normally toss your dirty clothes. When you can no longer tell which socks are which, round 2 of the laundry nightmare begins. You have to wash them all. Once again, you have no socks.
And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, you suddenly remember that you didn't ever dry that batch of jeans, and now they're sitting, moldy, in the bottom of a damp washer. From last week. The funny pink slime comes with a funny pink smell, and now your whole apartment smells like bad cabbage. Good luck cleaning THAT. You now have to RE-wash all the jeans before you can even get started on the dirty socks. Your projected 2 hours of laundry has just turned into 3 or more. Your living space hasn't been clean for a week and a half, and now you have no clean clothes, and you've spent so much time doing laundry that you have neglected other chores. This cycle is vicious and never-ending.
I argue that since America has the resources to do so, we ought to buy a new outfit every time we soil one. This method will ease the stress of millions of laundry-doers nationwide, thus sparing innocent children from the unnecessary wrath of frazzled mothers. This change will be beneficial to society as a whole because everyone who currently does laundry will be saving time that they would be able to use for entertainment or educational, or a plethora of other non-stressful uses.
Sources: My apartment (2007-present).
My wife loves to clean. She is always trying to get all the dishes done because she loves the feeling of having a clean home. This is why she refuses to do laundry. Doing laundry might, at first thought, seem like a great way to sterilize your living conditions. But in reality, it can create such a mess that it is impossible to ever have a clean home again.
Think of what happens when your clothes get dirty. Many people toss them in a bin, and many other people toss them on the floor before crashing into bed. The dirty laundry needs to go somewhere, so most people then put it in the washing machine. While it's washing, you put on new clothes. This makes them dirty. So by the time you get your laundry done, you will still have dirty laundry that needs to be taken care of. This is the cyclical nature of clothing. You are never done with the task.
The major problem, however, doesn't come into play until the end of the drying cycle. Where do you put the clean laundry? Not in the same bin that you had all your dirty laundry in. Then you wouldn't have anywhere for your dirties. So you toss it on your bed, or on a clean part of the floor, or on the couch. Then the nightmare happens. You have to rush out the door because you're late for work (you knew you shouldn't have started in the first place, you knew this would happen. But you didn't have a single clean pair of socks...) and you leave your house with a big pile of clean laundry. How long does this pile last? It depends on how much you washed. It's tough to find time to fold so many clothes, so they sit there, on average, for two weeks. During this time, you pick up your clean clothes off the floor each morning as you get dressed, and before long, you've forgotten which socks are clean and which are dirty. After all, you have piled your unfolded clean clothes in the same place you normally toss your dirty clothes. When you can no longer tell which socks are which, round 2 of the laundry nightmare begins. You have to wash them all. Once again, you have no socks.
And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, you suddenly remember that you didn't ever dry that batch of jeans, and now they're sitting, moldy, in the bottom of a damp washer. From last week. The funny pink slime comes with a funny pink smell, and now your whole apartment smells like bad cabbage. Good luck cleaning THAT. You now have to RE-wash all the jeans before you can even get started on the dirty socks. Your projected 2 hours of laundry has just turned into 3 or more. Your living space hasn't been clean for a week and a half, and now you have no clean clothes, and you've spent so much time doing laundry that you have neglected other chores. This cycle is vicious and never-ending.
I argue that since America has the resources to do so, we ought to buy a new outfit every time we soil one. This method will ease the stress of millions of laundry-doers nationwide, thus sparing innocent children from the unnecessary wrath of frazzled mothers. This change will be beneficial to society as a whole because everyone who currently does laundry will be saving time that they would be able to use for entertainment or educational, or a plethora of other non-stressful uses.
Sources: My apartment (2007-present).
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
FW: Whatever I feel like writing
One time I read a story, a fictional story, about a kid who replaced the hemoglobin in his blood with chlorophyll. Then he could regrow limbs and didn't need to eat because he got his energy from the sun. And of course his skin turned green. I made a sculpture to represent the book, and I had a big block of clay with a hand coming out one side, a plant coming out another side, and a metamorphic plant-hand in two different stages on the other two sides. I thought it was a fantastic way to represent the idea of the book. And I thought it would be a really interesting thing to think about on the bus ride to and from school. It doesn't make any sense realistically, but I started thinking about other medical possibilities. I wondered about whether or not you could meld two people into one. Suppose you scraped off all the skin off of one side of your body. It would heal itself. Suppose that you and a friend both did that, and then for the entire healing process, you held your open wounds against each other's. Would your bodies grow together? Would you have one big skin organ covering both of you? Would the DNA in the nucleus of your cells have to change to be compatible with both bodies? What would happen if you took the new DNA and cloned it? What would it look like? Hmmm... There's really no ethical way to find out any of those things. But sometimes I do think it would be fun to be a mad scientist with no morals; you could inject someone full of chlorophyll just to see what happens. What a career!
Saturday, March 15, 2008
TA: Plastic Surgery for Paper A
1. Cut half of the introduction. Find the things parents want to hear, and get rid of the rest.
2. Put contract on the first page instead of the second.
3. Fewer quotes on page 2. Only keep the first quote, or none.
4. Scrap quote at bottom of page 3.
5. The whole second-to-last page just sucks, that's all there is to it. I'm ashamed I wrote that crap.
6. More information is needed about career opportunities if I'm going to keep that argument in the paper. Make room to add a little of that, or else cut out the whole section.
7. Try to not use the same words over and over again.
8. No exaggerations, no numbers that aren't backed up by research.
9. Cut out words that are more than three syllable unless it's really going to make a difference in meaning.
10. Think more about the audience, look at different points, make a list of all my mini-arguments and then start hacking away.
11. Make a lot of the sentences shorter. A lot of them run on and they lose momentum and are a waste of time.
12. The whole paper is disjointed, there's not a good flow, the argument isn't clear because everything is out of order. Again, make an outline or a list and organize the dang thing before rewriting it.
2. Put contract on the first page instead of the second.
3. Fewer quotes on page 2. Only keep the first quote, or none.
4. Scrap quote at bottom of page 3.
5. The whole second-to-last page just sucks, that's all there is to it. I'm ashamed I wrote that crap.
6. More information is needed about career opportunities if I'm going to keep that argument in the paper. Make room to add a little of that, or else cut out the whole section.
7. Try to not use the same words over and over again.
8. No exaggerations, no numbers that aren't backed up by research.
9. Cut out words that are more than three syllable unless it's really going to make a difference in meaning.
10. Think more about the audience, look at different points, make a list of all my mini-arguments and then start hacking away.
11. Make a lot of the sentences shorter. A lot of them run on and they lose momentum and are a waste of time.
12. The whole paper is disjointed, there's not a good flow, the argument isn't clear because everything is out of order. Again, make an outline or a list and organize the dang thing before rewriting it.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
RA: Lecture at Noon
PLEASE ANNOUNCE AND ENCOURAGE STUDENTS AND FACULTY TO ATTEND
At the request of the Australian Area Presidency BYU has invited Professor of Sociology Gary D. Bouma from Australia to visit Utah and to give a lecture at BYU. Professor Bouma is Chair of the UNESCO Interreligious and Intercultural Relations committee in Asia Pacific. Professor Gary Bouma is a very influential opinion leader in Australia and is among the ones with whom the Church most wants to cultivate a relationship. He is one of the most prominent commentators on Christian and non Christian faith traditions in Australia. His role with UNESCO and the World Parliament of Religions shows his significance. We are delighted he accepted the invitation to give a lecture at BYU. May I extend a special invitation for you and your students to attend.
Time: 12:00 noon
Date: Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Location: Conference Room of the David M. Kennedy Center
Lecture Title: AInter Religious Understanding@ Pete
Erlend D. Peterson
Associate International Vice President
Ext. 2-1803
===========================================
So this was forwarded to me by a sociology professor, encouraging me to attend this special lecture. First and foremost, I have to comment that the use of official titles was very impressive. In one paragraph they fit in Area Presidency, Chair of the UNESCO Interreligious and Intercultural Relations committee, World Parliament of Religions, and Associate International Vice President. That is obviously for ethos effect.
BYU students who are enrolled in majors in the colleges of humanities, family home and social sciences, and political science are the primary target of this email. These are students that generally have free time because their majors are easy. Just kidding. But they are usually more interested in things like religious and cultural diversity issues, and especially in a foreign setting.
The Vice President of the University signed his name to this message and highlighted how important it is to the Church that this visitor be treated with respect. To BYU students, that is like getting a calling. It's serious business to be invited to help the Church. Citing Dr. Bouma's achievements and the Church's desire to cultivate a relationship with him was enough to fill the room past capacity.
This is a fairly typical announcement for a man of Dr. Bouma's prominence. I have seen various emails like this one that invite students to listen to some of the most distinguished of academics. They seem to be very effective, partly because everyone wants to rub shoulders with the leaders of the fields they are interested in. Some students are genuinely interested in the presentation, and need very little persuasion. Some students are lazy about their outside-of-class learning, and they need a prodding to get them to attend. That is pretty well accomplished by means of lots of fancy titles. I think it worked wonderfully. I even skipped my class to go.
At the request of the Australian Area Presidency BYU has invited Professor of Sociology Gary D. Bouma from Australia to visit Utah and to give a lecture at BYU. Professor Bouma is Chair of the UNESCO Interreligious and Intercultural Relations committee in Asia Pacific. Professor Gary Bouma is a very influential opinion leader in Australia and is among the ones with whom the Church most wants to cultivate a relationship. He is one of the most prominent commentators on Christian and non Christian faith traditions in Australia. His role with UNESCO and the World Parliament of Religions shows his significance. We are delighted he accepted the invitation to give a lecture at BYU. May I extend a special invitation for you and your students to attend.
Time: 12:00 noon
Date: Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Location: Conference Room of the David M. Kennedy Center
Lecture Title: AInter Religious Understanding@ Pete
Erlend D. Peterson
Associate International Vice President
Ext. 2-1803
===========================================
So this was forwarded to me by a sociology professor, encouraging me to attend this special lecture. First and foremost, I have to comment that the use of official titles was very impressive. In one paragraph they fit in Area Presidency, Chair of the UNESCO Interreligious and Intercultural Relations committee, World Parliament of Religions, and Associate International Vice President. That is obviously for ethos effect.
BYU students who are enrolled in majors in the colleges of humanities, family home and social sciences, and political science are the primary target of this email. These are students that generally have free time because their majors are easy. Just kidding. But they are usually more interested in things like religious and cultural diversity issues, and especially in a foreign setting.
The Vice President of the University signed his name to this message and highlighted how important it is to the Church that this visitor be treated with respect. To BYU students, that is like getting a calling. It's serious business to be invited to help the Church. Citing Dr. Bouma's achievements and the Church's desire to cultivate a relationship with him was enough to fill the room past capacity.
This is a fairly typical announcement for a man of Dr. Bouma's prominence. I have seen various emails like this one that invite students to listen to some of the most distinguished of academics. They seem to be very effective, partly because everyone wants to rub shoulders with the leaders of the fields they are interested in. Some students are genuinely interested in the presentation, and need very little persuasion. Some students are lazy about their outside-of-class learning, and they need a prodding to get them to attend. That is pretty well accomplished by means of lots of fancy titles. I think it worked wonderfully. I even skipped my class to go.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
FW: Waiving Some Requirements
I think that BYU should consider letting certain people NOT take certain classes that are normally required for graduation. I consider myself to be a prime candidate. If you look at my overall GPA and the GPA within my major and minor, you'll see a very interesting trend. In my Spanish minor, I have 31 credits of As and A-s. In my Sociology major, I've never gotten a grade lower than an A. On the other hand, my overall GPA is riddled with Cs and Ds and one D- that I am very very excited about. It means I didn't get the F I was expecting, thanks to a generous curve. At one point I was within 0.2 points of academic probation. What do these low scoring classes have in common? They're all GEs, and they happen to be my science requirements. I have come to accept the fact that I suck at science. I'm just bad at it. It's really the math that kills me, I just haven't gotten the nerve to take a math class since I failed pre-algebra and physics in high school. I was a senior two years in a row, because I needed another science credit. I heard that physics was easier than chemistry at my school, so I signed up for it. Well, apparently they both would have been too hard, because I ended up getting a 27% in the class. My teacher gave me a C so that I could graduate so that I wouldn't have to be a senior a third year. Somehow I made it to BYU (proof that miracles do happen) and suddenly I had to dread signing up for more science classes. I'm taking my last one now. It's Chem 101. And it's over my head. I'm just not built to be able to do science. I suck at it. I try and fail, over and over and over. There appears to be no mercy at the Lord's University. They must enjoy watching me sign up for classes that are too hard for me and then then watching me suffer through an entire semester and then watch me yet again when grades are posted. It's really very mean of them. I know I'm supposed to have a well-rounded education, but let's face it. I'LL NEVER BE WELL-ROUNDED. Cut me some slack, geez.
Monday, March 10, 2008
TA: Rotarian thought
My audience is very specific. It's the president-elect of Rotary Club. I want him to use his influence in the club to help prevent people from wasting their time and money by going and "saving the world" without understanding how the world works. I think that a lot of Rotary Club members want to do something big and be a part of a huge project because it makes them feel like they are contributing to something greater than themselves. They are a service-oriented group. They want to be active and involved. They like to go-and-do and get their hands dirty in a good cause. It's American Jihad. So how do you control a group of workers who are all motivated by an individual inner drive to serve?
The real problem is that we need order. If everyone tries to accomplish the same goal in a hundred different ways, you end up with a hundred half-finished projects and no money left. If you take a hundred efforts and combine them in one, your work will be finished, and you will have plenty of leftover money and work energy. If you're going to change the world, you need synergy, and a lot of resources.
When Rotary Club goes out to help poor people in Africa, it's a good cause, but it's done wrong. Rotarians are wasting money and effort, but they don't see it. They see themselves as heroes who just need to do a little more. We need to placate the hero in them while helping them to see the synergy argument. It's hard to people who "just want to help NOW" to wait a little while. It's like telling a kid he can't have cake until after dinner. It's better in the long run, but we need to do some other things first.
I guess I'm trying to argue patience to a bunch of g0-getters. That's really what it boils down to.
The real problem is that we need order. If everyone tries to accomplish the same goal in a hundred different ways, you end up with a hundred half-finished projects and no money left. If you take a hundred efforts and combine them in one, your work will be finished, and you will have plenty of leftover money and work energy. If you're going to change the world, you need synergy, and a lot of resources.
When Rotary Club goes out to help poor people in Africa, it's a good cause, but it's done wrong. Rotarians are wasting money and effort, but they don't see it. They see themselves as heroes who just need to do a little more. We need to placate the hero in them while helping them to see the synergy argument. It's hard to people who "just want to help NOW" to wait a little while. It's like telling a kid he can't have cake until after dinner. It's better in the long run, but we need to do some other things first.
I guess I'm trying to argue patience to a bunch of g0-getters. That's really what it boils down to.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
FW: Scalding Surprise
When other kids were throwing parties while their parents went out on Friday nights, I watched 20/20 with Barbara Walters.
One time I saw an episode where she was interviewing victims of superheated liquid explosions. You see, people would put a jar or glass of water in the microwave to boil it. But in certain conditions, the bubbles don't form on the sides of the container. This means that the liquid can't convert into a gas (like it normally does at boiling temperatures). So the liquid actually gets hotter than 212 F; it really shouldn't, according to physics, but it does. Then as soon as you touch the container, there is enough energy transferred from your hand to the water (or just from the vibration of moving it) that the water instantly vaporizes and destroys your life. The interviewees usually had faces so scarred that it was hard to tell where their eyes were and where their nose was. Most of them lost the use of their hands, and some lost their sight. It was horrible. No wonder it was on prime time television.
Ever since then I've been afraid to boil water in the microwave, just in case. I usually just put it in a pan on the stove and boil it the old fashioned way. I know it's probably a very slim chance that something like that could happen to me, but what if I'm one of the rare statistics? That would pretty much hurt a lot. No thanks.
One time I saw an episode where she was interviewing victims of superheated liquid explosions. You see, people would put a jar or glass of water in the microwave to boil it. But in certain conditions, the bubbles don't form on the sides of the container. This means that the liquid can't convert into a gas (like it normally does at boiling temperatures). So the liquid actually gets hotter than 212 F; it really shouldn't, according to physics, but it does. Then as soon as you touch the container, there is enough energy transferred from your hand to the water (or just from the vibration of moving it) that the water instantly vaporizes and destroys your life. The interviewees usually had faces so scarred that it was hard to tell where their eyes were and where their nose was. Most of them lost the use of their hands, and some lost their sight. It was horrible. No wonder it was on prime time television.
Ever since then I've been afraid to boil water in the microwave, just in case. I usually just put it in a pan on the stove and boil it the old fashioned way. I know it's probably a very slim chance that something like that could happen to me, but what if I'm one of the rare statistics? That would pretty much hurt a lot. No thanks.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
RA: Eliminate Poverty?
"If We Could Electrify Africa, We Would Eliminate Poverty in a Decade"
By Tom Setter, retired Orthopedic Surgeon, Rotarian (39 years) from Anthem, Arizona
http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/projects/news/press_releases/rotary/if-we-could-electrify-africa.shtml
Audience: Rotary club members
WATCO Working to provide electricity to Africa on poverty? Your help in providing electricity to Africa will help eliminate poverty there because when you give them the resources they need, they can learn to work their own way out of poverty.
First, I have to comment that the logic of this article is extremely weak. Setter predicts that Africans will work their way out of poverty just like his grandfather did. But Africa and Minnesota are two very different places, and the life of a farmer in the midwest is not analogous to the life of most people living in Africa. There are no reasons given for choosing a decade as the appropriate time-frame for eliminating poverty, except for that is how long it took in the United States. But, even in the US, we have poverty. Maybe we could eliminate poverty for some people, or even for many people, but it is hard to prove that you can actually "eliminate poverty".
The argument relies heavily on emotion, the story about his grandfather is supposed to help the audience see the problem in Africa in American Dream terms. If only they had a way to start, the people could work and save and eventually prosper. This is appealing to members of Rotary Club because they like to do work for other people to make a difference. Making great leaps in humanitarian service is a very exciting thing for members of this club. Setter also offers snapshots of life in a village without electricity and without water. He highlights the difficulty of life and cites this as his principle reason for calling club members to action. It is primarily an emotional appeal.
I think that the author is credible, however, to his audience. His call for help in this project is motivated by non-rational factors. He isn't doing this to earn a profit. He is doing it out of pure compassion for the people he serves. To Rotarians, this is a necessary component of any successful argument because a self-interested author would probably offend the majority of Rotarians.
The argument is very typical of something that any international humanitarian service giver would say in trying to recruit others to help in his cause. The argument is relevant to his audience, it is something they all care about. But I do think that Setter's argument is flawed in its accuracy. There is no data supporting what he claims. His main points (the ones in bold) are very much undocumented and unsupported by any details or scientific investigation. We have only his eye-witness accounting, which is limited. As I read this article, I was not convinced that Setter knows what he is talking about, but there is a significant amount of emotional pressure to support him anyway. I think that for most Rotary Club members, this article would be persuasive enough to at least provoke thought and even public discussion about the matter. And that is probably Setter's goal, to raise awareness of the problem and encourage other people to help in whatever ways they can. I believe that despite the unsupported claims and faulty logic, this argument has probably been partially responsible for sending people to Africa to work on the power lines.
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