(Christian Brown, Question #2) I believe that the list of “taboos” in Gross Points is essential for the audience to fully understand the point that Appiah is trying to get across, which was basically that there are numbers of different customs that differ from culture to culture. He included them in order for the reader to be able to relate to one of the examples he gave. I found the example about “Americans eat pigs, but not cats” to be one of the more interesting, not only because I’m a vegetarian, but also because I feel that it was one of the more effective examples he listed. This subject as a whole was a real eye-opener, although was familiar with a handful of the examples from taking Cultural Anthropology last semester He hopes to gain acceptance of the fact that different cultures have different ideas and standards. I think that Appiah truly wants the reader to become familiar with the idea that there are different cultural values that must be respected. This chunk of text in particular is important to the whole excerpt because what seems to be “good” in one culture may be the complete opposite in another. And he used the list of examples to emphasize that.