This week we read Mark Twain’s tongue-in-cheek advice to youth. Select two of the readings and create your own list of advice to youth. Be sure to list the readings you selected. Your list can be ironic like Mark Twain’s, but it cannot be offensive. Offensive, for the purposes of this assignment, means singling out any group or gender as the target of inappropriate comments and insults. Remember, your list should aim at getting youth to behave ethically.

The following readings from the Norton Reader
Mark Twain, Advice to Youth, (550)
Peter Singer, What should a Millionaire Give – and What Should You? (578)
Michael Pollan, An Animal’s Place, (619)
Steven Weinberg, Without God, (1074)
Reg Saner, My Fall Into Knowledge, (1085)
Virginia Woolf, The Death of the Moth, (1107)
This week your readings begin with a lecture by the nineteenth-century author and humorist Mark Twain. He offers advice that is serious, humorous, and ironic; for example, “You want to be very careful about lying; otherwise you are nearly sure to get caught” (550). Peter Singer’s essay challenges not only ‘millionaires’ but everyone to end global poverty; Singer argues “…it should be seen as a serious moral failure when those with ample income do not do their fair share toward relieving global poverty” (588). Michael Pollan’s essay makes the point that we are separated from the origins of our food – where and how it reaches us. He poses an important moral question in the essay, “whether we owe animals that can feel pain any moral consideration” (624). The Nobel prize-winning scientist, Steven Weinberg, also happens to be a professed atheist and his writings – like the selection for this week – include interesting philosophical and theological reflections. This week’s piece, written for a general audience, explores the tension between science and religious belief. The American poet, Reg Saner, uses wry humor as he describes a debate between himself and an anti-Darwinian and hard-core fundamentalist held before an audience of working-class Baptists. The final essay is one of Virginia Woolf’s best known works of nonfiction. Woolf observes and identifies with a moth in its death throes. The readings for this week are interesting, challenging and varied; they will also help you complete your assignments for this week, so be sure to plan your reading time accordingly.