posted
So my team is going to a tournament this weekend, and I'm not, so I thought I'd keep off moping with working on speeches. Does anyone have any important issues that few people have ever heard of? Or interesting things that a good speech could be written on? My coach didn't have any ideas, and this seems like one of the best places to ask for issues people never talk about.
I'd welcome any ideas. And new spins on old issues are good, if people haven't heard some new fact about it.
posted
What about all the waste generated by feminine products? There ARE alternatives to paper tampons and super-gel filled pads...
Posts: 3141 | Registered: Apr 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm doing it either for Persuasion or informative, and quite likely I'm going to write one of each.
I never did any of the speech events in high school, just debate. This speech-writing stuff is a whole new world for me Posts: 3493 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
The territorial rights of wild animals. Every time the woods are wiped out for development of a new strip mall or subdivision, hundreds or thousands of animals die from having their homes destroyed. Songbird populations, for example, have dropped drastically in the last decade. Do humans have unlimited rights to kill other animals and take their homes? Or should wild animals also have property rights?
Posts: 5509 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
If the purpose of civilization is the protection of the weak from the depredations of the strong, then how well do our modern civilizations fufill this goal? How do the least powerful, most vulnerable, sectors of our populations fare under modern western techonological democratic governments? How does this compare with other forms of government or with primitive pre-technological societies? Are things getting better or worse, in this regard, and to what extent? In what contexts are the weak given the fairest treatment or the most protection from brutalization?
Posts: 5509 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Individual rights and freedoms are facing unprecedented changes in recent times. On the one hand, the rise of the internet has put more information in the hands of people with access than ever before. Governments are powerless to control the free flow of news and information to those who participate in our huge experiment in global connectivity. On the other hand, electronic surveillance and anti-terror laws have given unprecedented big-brother spying capabilities to governments or any other organizations or even individuals who care to use it, for that matter.
What will this mean for the future of civilization? What is the best eventual outcome, and how can we bring that about?
posted
The v-chip and how it can be used to keep me from having to watch commercials for feminine hygiene products.
Posts: 288 | Registered: Nov 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Secret Government Agencies in a Free Society: A Bad Recipe?
The CIA, KGB, MI6, and so on all seem to have become entrenched parts of our modern governments around the time of WW2, with precursors back to the dawn of time, of course.
I think each of them justify their existence because of the existence of the others. In times of war, intelligence gathering and covert operations have often made an enormous difference in outcomes. Surely they have shown their worth in many ways.
On the other hand, whenever their activities come to light, it's almost always something that Americans are horribly opposed to. Toppling legitimately elected democratic governments in Latin America in favor of repressive dictators, for instance. Assisting in genocide of native populations by other repressive governments. Blowing up Russian pipelines to damage the Soviet economy. Over and over again we hear of them doing immoral things that we abhor. Many of our worst enemies in the world (Cuba, Iran, etc.) actually came to hate us because of what we ordinary American people would, had we lived there at the time, feel was good reason. There's a very strong case to be made that the CIA has made so many more enemies for the U.S. in the world than they've helped defeat, that they've actually made our country much less safe and secure than it would have been without them.
Now that there is only one superpower, I ask this question. Can we not afford to do without this sort of skullduggery? Do these covert operations, of often dubious or repulsive morality, actually advance the cause of freedom and democracy in the world, or set it back? Is it not always the best policy in the long run to do what is right? Would we all breathe more freely and be happier if we knew that America didn't ever indulge in such things? Is it possible to survive and win and actually be the true good guys?
Posts: 5509 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
What is the correct response to a government that doesn't hear your protest or address the issues that matter to you?
Increasingly, people in the world are resorting to terrorism. The history of our species is full of wars, petty wars, guerilla wars, tribal infighting, genocides, warlords, mafia warlords, gang violence, cabals, and so on at every level from grade school to worldwide.
What path that we can take to cut through stuff like this to a real human civilization that is responsible, responsive to the people, intelligent, respectful, and sensitive to the quality of people's lives? One that promotes safety and well being, but allows maximum freedom? One that encourages the growth of a mature, responsible, sensible, well educated, populace?
Should we train all citizens in the art of non-violent protest? Is non-violent protest an effective means of bringing about change in all situations?
posted
Technology is a strong determinant of social systems. During the middle ages, for instance, the fact that castles were nearly impregnable, and trained armored knights were not very vulnerable to attack by peasants, gave rise to the stability of feudalism as a social form. The prevalence of defensive technology over offensive made for conservative social systems with a great emphasis on courtesy and chivalry.
Gunpowder and the longbow changed all that. Cannon blew the castles away, and any sturdy yeoman with a longbow could slay an expensively trained and armored knight.
Slavery is another example. It is said that societies are as moral as they can afford to be. The rise of mechanization, the harvesting machines and the cotton gin, made slavery no longer an economically viable proposition. The industries today which are still the most manually labor intensive, for instance harvesting fruit or sewing garments, are still the ones in which the most slavelike conditions prevail. Worldwide, of course, the existence of economically vulnerable populations in record numbers has made slavery a terrible problem once again, and the cost of a slave in real dollars is lower now than at any time in history.
What directions can technology head in order to yield the maximum social benefits to our current world sitation, and what can we do to promote the growth of technologies which will improve the overall social and moral climate of the planet?
Posts: 5509 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
We've wiped out smallpox now, and are on the way to wiping out tuberculosis. Yet SARS and the Asian Bird Flu are posing new challenges to world health.
Plague times are common throughout history. There's no reason to believe we are any less vulnerable now than the Europeans were to Black Death, or to Spanish Flu, or to any other of the many epidemics which have decimated the human population over the ages.
In fact, in this age of enormous population growth and rapid jet travel, we are probably more vulnerable than ever before.
How do we head off the next pandemic, and how do we deal with it if it does occur? Can civilization survive 75% of the population dying from some communicable disease, for instance?
Posts: 5509 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
When you begin to think about government policy, you are always facing sins of commission or omission. If we invade Iraq, hundreds of innocent people will surely die from the fortunes of war. If we don't when we could, Saddam Hussein will continue to execute his people by the hundreds of thousands. Whichever decision you make, you are directly or indirectly responsible for the death of the innocent.
If you decide to put more funds into education and school lunches, instead of healthcare or pensions for the elderly, old people will die. Some of them will have their power cut off in the wintertime and freeze to death. Others will get poor nutrition and succumb to poor health. On the other hand, if you take care of the elderly, the kids go hungry and without good schools. This means more violent crime, more learning disorders, and so on, as well as a less-educated population down the road.
If you don't upgrade the infrastructure of the power system or the highways, people die in blackouts or auto accidents. If you spend money doing one thing, you take it away from something else, and the net result is that some number of people in your homeland die.
Is it possible to be president of a large country and still be a moral human being? Is every prime minister a murderer? How do you make decisions like this and still do what's right? Are there different rules of morality for those in power as opposed to we common folk?
Posts: 5509 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
To follow up on Amka's post, here is an interesting allegation I never heard of before (don't know if it is true or not):
quote:After World War II, while the Germans were preparing for trial at Nuremberg, the U.S., represented by General Douglas MacArthur, brokered secret deals with the Japanese government. In exchange for their research on germ warfare and human biology, the murderous actions of the Japanese in China and elsewhere in the Pacific would be ignored. Even today, the germ-warfare research which the U.S. obtained, and which some believe may explain some POW illnesses, has not been declassified.
posted
What does a society owe the individual within it (and vice versa - what does the individual owe a society) and how does this change with scale?
What about the millions of landmines left behind by various wars that mutilate and kill thousands of people each year? Whose responsibility should it be to remove landmines?
posted
I'm surprised aka didn't talk about the possible real dangers of asteroid impact... that would also be interesting, though maybe too easy to rebutt
My wife is working on her Japanese minor, and one of her classmates/friends went to the Arizona Memorial on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor a few years back for research on her thesis.....
Did you know that the POW's held by Japan were force to work themselves to death, and that the profits of their labors were given to veryprominante Japanese companies as Mitsubeshi, Toshiba (??? I'm not sure about Toshiba), and to the Japanese goverment? Now America buys most of their products.....I find that facinating...
Everything the Japanese did was in complete violation of human right laws, as bad as anything that has ever been done to any POW, but our goverment not only allowed these companies to keep their profits, but never compensated the GI's at all! Not only that, but every one of the POW's were forced to sign waivers of legal action as a condition of their release; but they were not forced by the Japanese, but by are own goverment! Only 5-6 people were shipped out of the islands without first signing the waiver (and they only got away with it due to medical incapacitation), and one of them sucessfully sued the Japanese goverment a few years back and won millions ......but all other claims against the Japanese have been dismissed by our courts on the basis of those waivers despite the fact that they were signed under duress!!
Now THAT'S a dangerous topic, but one that has been overlooked for too many years....
Kwea
P.S. I'll have Jenni post the details later, and if you have any questions just ask here.....she posts whenever she can, and she'll love this thread!
posted
I wish I could DO that one. Our coach would never let me do WWII stuff..... Or really anything historical. NOt for a persuasion, and it would never do for an inform... Posts: 3493 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm assuming Anna would have thought of that already (asteroid impact) if she were interested in using it.
I really would like to know what people think about all these questions. I'd like to figure out what *I* think. Maybe I should start threads. Hmmmmm.
Posts: 5509 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Along those same lines, I heard in the last few years about the "downwinders", Americans living in Utah and Nevada downwind of the nuclear tests they did there during and after WW2. Why did they do the tests way out there in the desert? So only a few people would get contaminated with all the fallout and blast radiation and so on. What about those few people who did live there? Yep, they got contaminated. They apparently get weird cancers at many times the normal rate. Lots of them are prematurely dead. I thought it odd that I'd never heard of them before. Apparently they never got compensated or anything. Even their health care costs weren't covered. They're just more casualties of war.
Posts: 5509 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Why wouldn't it do for an Inform? It could be very informative, as long as you traced the actual source material and not just some random guy on hatrack...
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Child labour and what can be done to eradicate it. To truly help people who go to money lenders and have to sell their children to work in factories and rug companies...
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
because informatives have to be on really new things that people haven't heard of. They're almost always new science and technology stuff-like one of my teammates did one on invisibility cloaks. Stuff like that. Inform has to follow the same patterns as everyone else, just with a cooler topic than anyone else. Otherwise, the coach wouldn't let me do it. Which sucks, because it WOULD be a good thing to do an informative speech on, and almost certainly a LOT more interesting than invisibility cloaks and dark matter.
A topic everyone likes to pretend never exited, when we forcefully sterilized over 60,000 people under a program which the Nazis used as justification for their own ethnic cleansing.
Posts: 515 | Registered: Mar 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
So, it an "inform" has to be new and cool, huh? How about the robotic exoskeletons? Or cool robotic arms? Or microbial fuel cells that use sewage to power them? Go look at New Scientist - they've got tons of cool cutting-edge technology articles.
Posts: 5879 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Hail]](graemlins/hail.gif)
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
