TED Talk

My topic for my TED Talk is something all od us are affected by and that's gossip.  Us as girls particularly know how tempting it is and we can all say we have done it.  It is a part of life but, why do we do it? We all know the consequences and hurt that it can bring to us if we find out our "friends" were talking behind our back.  Nothing good comes out of gossip and my goal for my TED Talk is to inform and persuade.  I want to talk about the process of gossiping and the cycle that happens when a rumor gets started.  I will also have a visual aid for this.  I want to persuade people as well to make a change and put a stop to this domino effect because once something is said you can't take it back.  People may forget what you said but, they will never forget how you made them feel and taking a second to think before you speak or assume can benefit everyone.  Your attitude and the type of person you are shown directly through your actions and words.  Gossip may relate to someone's characteristics they possess such as jealousy, hate, envy ect.  So I want to explain also why people gossip and the motives they have.  We are all guilty of this action and my goal is not to target anyone or anything but, to merely make people stop and think for a minute before they say something.

When we watched the TED Talk on the blind man one thing I wrote about in my double entry journals stuck out at me.  I can't get out of my head the fact that throughout the entire twenty minutes this man talked about his vision impairment and would say the words "I see" or "I saw".  Such thing is physically impossible for a blind person to do but, the way he goes about sharing his stories and memories in this ironic vocab somehow works for him.  As I talked about in my last post he talks so highly of his disability and doesn't let it effect his life in a negative way and I think that's another reason why he uses this sort of vocab.  To him being able to see means something different because he was born blind and has no prior knowledge of what it really means to see.  He uses the word "see" meaning read.  He talked about he could see the different images and words that were read to him.  It's hard for us to imagine exactly what he means though because he has never "seen" anything in his life so we wonder what he must picture in his head or if he pictures anything at all.  This is way I chose this double entry journal because I just don't entirely know what he meant my saying he can "see" and maybe there really isn't an answer.

Claire had a double entry journal from the TED Talk we watch about the blind man and how technology helped him "see".  He talked about when he was little and how his mother would read him stories and he spoke so highly of his vision impairment.  He stated "I was born in the right place and right time." He was born with what some people would believe to be one of the worst things that could happen to someone but, this is all he knows and doesn't look for pity or sympathy from anyone. Instead he uses it as a tool for happiness.  Claire talked about how his statement has great impact on your privileges and things we cannot control.  I agree with her because after all it is up to us to determine our futures.  We cannot help the fact that we were born blind, or deaf, or have a disability but, we can control our attitude about it and what we make of it.  Claire also wrote down that this can cause barriers which makes it challenging for us to overcome but, again what we make of ourselves from said barriers is what we can control.  The blind man in the TED Talk had such a positive outlook (attitude) on such a life changing disability (barrier).  He couldn't help the fact that he was blind but, chose to not let it ruin his life.  He almost looks at it like a gift and I think that's why he says "I was born at the right place at the right time".

I have a few ideas for the TED talk and getting some feedback would be awesome.  My first idea i was thinking of doing more of a narrative approach with a more personal story.  I wanted to talk about my journey with volleyball and what a champion is in my eyes.  More of a definition piece rather than an argumentative or persuasive.

Another idea I had was talking about doing was eating disorders and the perfect plastic image that media puts in our minds.  It is implying that to be beautiful you must skinning, have perfect skin and be 6 feet tall.  I was gonna go more of a definition route on this piece as well defining what beauty is and how media has altered what it means to be beautiful.

Going off of the whole "what is beauty" I also though about beauty pageants and talking about the negative affects of them.  The show toddlers in tiaras would help with my evidence because in this show it is obvious that the 3-9 year olds have some attitude and ego issues and to me it would be interesting to look at how beauty pageants affect what they think about their image.

Also when it comes to sporting events I wanted to maybe talk about what makes a fan or something to do with being a good sport. I remember reading in the paper an article a Moorhead woman submitted about the Bemidji Student section at a football game having unsportsman like comments.  I strongly disagreed with this lady's letter and would argue or define what a fan is.

My last idea is the tobacco advertising campaigns that have been going on lately.  I think they should shift more to target teens because being a smoker for life starts when you are young.  The ads try and "scare" the observer into not smoker but, in my opinion they should target image.  Again, image is important to young people and if they new their image would be ruined because of smoking they might not try it.

If you have any feedback I would love to hear about it! Thanks!

In Gayle Rosenwald Smith's The Wife-Beater many fallacies can been seen throughout.  One example is Begging the Question when Smith says "The name is the issue." She is trying to pin the many cases of abuse on the fact that people attribute this name degrading statement to a piece of clothing. Claiming that people think it's okay to call it a "wife-beater" and in turn they look at domestic abuse as something overlook just like the name of this piece of clothing.  This helps her argument because she ties the two issues together making people think they are related, that the name is what is causing this abuse and that people don't think twice about the name. Another example is is Hasty Generalization when Smith states "Maybe youth today would rather ignore the overtones of the term wife-beater." she uses this generalization to attack youth in hopes that they will stop using this term.  The generalization will spark some attention by youth readers, which was her purpose in hopes to change their vocabulary and change their behavior.  Lastly Smith uses Begging the Question again when she says "...children of abusers often learn the behavior from their elders." She uses this in hopes that her audience will believe that correlation proves causation. She is stating that if a child has an abusive parent that they too will become abusive. Smith's use of fallacies throughout her story help to support her main purpose and persuade people to change the context and meaning of what a "wife-beater" is.