  Rubbish in Real Time II 5 more days until the exam, and I want to do at least two more essays. So I'll start the clock on this one at 10:30AM.
Issue Essay: "To truly understand your own culture - no matter how you define it - requires personal knowledge of at least one other culture, one that is distinctly different from your own. " The term culture encompasses a set of values, rituals, and codes of behavior shared by a particular group of people.
Within this group, these aspects make up one's entire life experience from birth to death, such that they become routine. Culture includes the language we speak and when and how it is spoken; it includes a set of religious or non-theistic ethical principles that governs our daily lives, and it includes the rules guiding all social interactions. We can practice our culture without being aware that there could be other ways of living our lives, since it could be the only thing we've ever known.
Thus, in order for each person to truly understand his own culture, he needs to have personal knowledge of at least one other culture whose rituals, codes, and values are distinctly different from those of his own. To understand something requires at the very least some knowledge about what that thing is, how it has come to be, and why it is that instead of something else.
When applied to culture, understanding requires knowledge of a different culture in order to compare and contrast the basic elements of each. Without knowledge of another culture, we would not even know that ours is, in fact, a culture that is one of a set of many different and distinct cultures. Similarly, if we had no knowledge of other celestial bodies we would not know that the earth is but one of many objects in the universe, and thus not have an understanding of what the earth truly is. Secondly, knowing another culture allows us to understand the origins of our own culture. Origins in this case does not mean the founding myths of a culture, which surely every one has.
Rather, it means the historical conditions which gave rise to the parricular set of ideas, practices, and values that made up this culture instead of another one. For example, an island nation in tropics will likely have developed a different type of culture than a land-locked nation in the desert.
In order to understand how one's own culture originated, one has to know about the origins of another culture in order to think about how differing conditions and circumstances impacted the development of each. It is only with this knowledge that culture are shaped by causal factors, and are not simply how things are naturally done, that we can understand our own culture. Thirdly, and perhaps most important, one needs to know about another culture in order to appreciate what is valuable in his own culture.
Without knowledge of how one's own culture could be different and what that experience might be like, one cannot really understand the experience of living in one's own culture. For example, a person growing up in a culture that values individualism and personal expression would not truly know why those two qualities of the culture are valuable, as that person has never experienced living in a culture that supressed or outright rejected those qualities. Knowledge of another culture's values and practices offers a different perspective from which one can learn to appreciate certain aspects of one's own culture.
Conversely, knowledge of another culture's practices allows each person to see what might more preferable in that other culture. To reuse the earlier example, someone from an individualistic society might find beneficial the emphasis on social cooperation and mutual assistance in another culture. Knowledge of a different way of living life forms the impetus for us to change what we do not like in our own ways of living.
Lastly, the knowledge one has to have of another culture, unlike the knowledge one might have about other plants, needs to be personal knowledge. Personal knowledge is necessary for two reasons. First, we each experience our own culture in slightly different ways, so that it is crucial that we can compare our own interpretation of our culture with another. Thus the comparison requires personal knowledge. Second, the same observations of a different culture will result in different opinions and understandings in each different person.
When we look through a telescope, we all see the same Juipter. Such is not the case when examining another culture. One cannot rely on someone else's knowledge of a different culture in order to compare and contrast, just as one cannot rely on someone's else's experience of one's own culture in order to do the same. Culture and its component values, rituals, and codes of behavior guide almost every aspect of our lives.
Since it is omnipresent in any given cultural group, one needs personal knowledge of another, distinct culture, in order to gain a prospective from which one can begin to understand one's own culture. It is through this knowledge of how life could be lived differently, that one can come to understand what it means to live life that way one does. Argument Essay The newsletter to investors contains one main conclusion based on two supporting conclusions.
The main conclusion is that investors who own the stock should sell their shares of Old Dairy Industries, and that investors who do not own the stock should not buy it. This advice is based on two conclusions: first, that results of a recent survey reflect an actual trend that consumers will buy less high fat and cholesterol foods in favor of lower fat and cholesterol varieties; second, that as a result of this possible shift in behavior, Old Dairy Industries' profits will decline. The author's faulty analysis of the information given and his neglect of possible contradicting information both undermine the main conclusion of the argument. The cited survey results indicate only what the surveyed consumers said they would do. The author does not indicate the source of the survey nor the selection process of the respondents.
It could be the case that the survey was given as part of a medical research process examining patients with heart disease, in which case there would be a strong sample bias against high fat and cholesterol foods, and would not reflect what consumers in general want to do. Moreover, the survey results indicate only what the respondents said they would "desire" to do, not what they actually have begun to do.
There is no empirical evidence showing a downturn in the sales of high fat and high cholesterol foods, without which it is premature to believe that consumers will actually behave differently when they are shopping. Given these two analytical flaws, one should not conclude that the survey results are reflective of actual, broad-based consumer behavior.
The author's second supporting conclusion is also problematic. It infers from the questionable conclusion that consumers will buy less high fat and cholesterol foods to conclude that the sales and profits of Old Dairy Industries will "diminish greatly," because that company markets many products that are high in fat and cholesterol. However, before one can soundly make that inference, one needs several other pieces of information, which the author of the newsletter does not provide. First, it is necessary to know whether or not Old Dairy Industries also markets other, low fat and cholesterol foods.
If it does, then there is reason to believe that a shift in consumer behavior will not hurt, and will possibly help, the company's bottom line, since those who stop buying one product from the company will start buying another. Second, there is no information whatsoever provided on what types of high fat and cholesterol foods the consumers will actually stop buying. Not all high fat and cholesterol foods are created equal. Some, like potato chips and other processed foods, provide no nutritional benefits and can probably be readily replaced in a person's diet.
Others, like milk, are essential to many people's diets and will be more difficult to replace even if it contains high far and cholesterol. If the kinds of products that Old Dariy Industries markets are more like the latter kind, then even a general decline in the sales of high fat and cholesterol foods are unlikely to greatly impact this particular company's sales.
The newsletter's advice is that investors should sell and avoid stock in Old Dairy Industries. This advice, however, is given based on unsound conclusions drawn from sketchy data and faulty inferences. One should not conclude from an unnamed survey that the respondents' answer, in the absence of supporting data, will reflect general consumer behavior. Furthermore, one should not conclude that a shift in general consumer purchase patterns away from high far and cholesterol foods will hurt Old Dairy Industries. There is no information on the types of high fat and cholesterol products it makets, nor on what other types of products it markets.
Both these factors could allow Old Dairy Industries to protect itself against, if not even profit from, a possible change in consumer purchasing behavior. 
