Extra Terrestrial Precises (They're out of this world!)

Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan, in his article "Space Topics: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence The Abundance of Life-Bearing Planets", refutes several of Mayr's statements that talk about the doubtful possibly of extraterrestrial life. Sagan bolsters his argument by showing examples against Mayr's ideas. Mr. Sagan's purpose in this article was to convince people to believe that there is strong evidence pointing to the existence of extra-terrestrials in order to help SETI recieve funding or support. Sagan's article is aimed towards people who are on the border and who are educated on such a matter. He does this through a sophisticated connection full of bombastic words.

Ernst Mayr

Ernst Mayr, wrote in his text: "Space Topics: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Can SETI Succeed? Not Likely", arguing that highly-intelligent extra-terrestrial life is unlikely to exist. Mayr proves this by countering arguments brought up by the opposing side. Mayr wrote this article in order to stop people from donating to SETI, a cause that he most likely believes is taking money and investing it in space, nothing. Sagan's and Mayr's audiences are the same. They both need a highly technical vocabulary about this topic and are on the fence about this topic.

Obama's interesting organization

Obama's structure of his speech is quite interesting due to the fact that he uses history and current events to collide with each other to make a semi-disorganized, semi-ordered speech. The disorganization caused by the current events helps show his point that the current events are causing racial differences between Blacks and Whites in America and that we should strive to fix that, shown through the order in the essay.

He starts his essay talking about the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, saying that everyone except the Black slaves were equal. Then he says one of his major points: "to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.", which he uses as a link between the abolishing slavery (something that comes a little after the Constitution in our nation's history) and his campaign. This then leads him into a personal anecdote followed up by a long story of Reverend Wright, after which the topic is changed back to the 1950's, a period well after the abolishment of slavery, the last point in US history where Obama left off in his speech. He then goes back to Wright once more before the conclusion. During the essay, it seems as though Obama is giving the history Black struggle during US history with breaks for Reverend Wright and current issues. The current issues are the ones that cause both the disunity in real life and the breaks in the history in the paper. The actual history is something that unifies the black people together, and that in the future, should unify both blacks and whites together.

Obama ends the essay with a story that takes place in the era of the end of conspicuous black struggle for equality in America, during the 1960's. This works as a good conclusion because it combines previous US history that Obama talks about with the beginning of "our union grow[ing] stronger", something that includes him and his potential future career. Thus Obama, as shown in this conclusion, effectively mixes the chronological order of US History, with breaks of the present (the idea of the union), creating an effect of a shrinking racial difference between blacks and whites. This idea is embedded throughout the essay by the the slow coming together of the black struggle for equality in US history and Obama's present career.

Precis of Obama speech

Barack Hussein Obama, the USA's potential next president, wrote a speech "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union" (2008) stating that Reverend Wright's comments weren't entirely false and that the blacks and whites of America need to work together. Obama illustrates his point by explaining why we need unity in our country and telling the audience that Reverend Wright had the right (haha, I made a pun) bases for his ideas, but the details weren't thought out logically. Mr. Obama's purpose is to convince people he wasn't wrong in associating himself with Rev. Wright in order to gain more votes/the trust of more of the people of the United States of America. The speech is aimed towards people who are doubtful of the actions of Barack Obama in associating himself with Reverend Wright and also both black and white eligible voters in the US.