Presentation Topic

[C is for]

Even though I have nothing to talk about, I pity-signed up to present a 3-5 min TED-like presentation for our Relief Society activity this week.

I'm simply not interested in anything right now to the extent that I'm willing to do any research. But I figure, the Board has probably already done the research on a lot of topics that my RS might find cool. I can't find any with cursory searching though.

You Board Writers will remember if you ever gave a treatise on something I could turn into a presentation easily. Maybe something linguistic? Or a what-if scenario backed up by Real Science (tm) or something about Harry Potter? Or politics probably actually not politics because then people will think I ~care about politics and I can't keep up that facade.
Or basically anything (within the bounds that I'm willing to pretend to be interested in it).
Also, doesn't have to be a Board answer. I know tumblr often has stuff that I could turn to my use but I gave up Tumblr for Lent so I can't research there.


Or even, someone could give me a topic and I could pretend to care about it long enough to research and turn up a 5-minute talk on it. I just want some burden of choice removed from me.

[mic0]

A linguistics professor at BYU worked on a paper about the differences between the Utah Mormon accent and the Utah non-Mormon accent. It might be fun/interesting to talk about sociolinguistics and how we all have these weird cues in our speech about not just where we live but other aspects of our identity. Could definitely be TED-y.

[Whistler]

since I've been doing work research on Lu Dalton and Alice Reynolds, I'd probably do a presentation on both of them (they were both interested in women's suffrage). I hear their wikipedia pages aren't bad...

[Shrinky Dink]

I've recently been reminiscing on my high school debate days and how many Ted talks are similar to a quality oratory. These two have some great stuff that they talk about that could be a starting place for finding something interesting/fun to talk about with some good stories to match.

America Without the Dream by Andrea Ambam

Surfin' USA by Nader Helmy

[C is for]

I'm loving these ideas. Last night at midnight (which is about 2.5 hours after my preferred bedtime) I came up with the brilliant idea of "Snape is the Worst, don't fight me on this" but I'm not sure if I want to pursue that either. I've got two days

[Whistler]

I'm loving these ideas. Last night at midnight (which is about 2.5 hours after my preferred bedtime) I came up with the brilliant idea of "Snape is the Worst, don't fight me on this" but I'm not sure if I want to pursue that either. I've got two days

tell me how Snape is the worst!

[mic0]

I've recently been reminiscing on my high school debate days and how many Ted talks are similar to a quality oratory.

This reminds me of how in junior high school I did oratory and had a TED-talk-esque speech (pre-TED talks, of course) about the therapeutic qualities of chocolate. As if anyone needed convincing.

[C is for]

I'm loving these ideas. Last night at midnight (which is about 2.5 hours after my preferred bedtime) I came up with the brilliant idea of "Snape is the Worst, don't fight me on this" but I'm not sure if I want to pursue that either. I've got two days

tell me how Snape is the worst!

I never ended up having to give the presentation (I forgot that I had offered to babysit my nephews that same evening and they don't live close so it was a big deal). But here's sort of some things that might've gotten mentioned in my "Snape is the Wooooooorst" presentation:

Things in his life Snape didn't have control over:
1) A less-than-ideal home life
2) Being bullied by James Potter and his friends while they were teenagers
3) Lily deciding she wanted to end the toxic friendship

Things in his life Snape did have control over:
1) Joining Death Eaters and buying into all of the anti-Muggleborn rhetoric despite knowing Lily was one of them
2) Bullying Harry for no reason (well...that he looks like his dad and Snape was bullied by his dad 15 years ago)
3) Bullying Neville for even less reason
4) Hating James Potter
5) "Letting slip" that Lupin's a werewolf
6) Straight-up telling Voldemort not to kill Lily (once he figured out the prophecy was about her kid) but that he didn't care about James or Harry
7) Hating Sirius Black to the point that he was super excited about him getting the Dementor's Kiss even though he had to know at least a little bit that he wasn't guilty

I'm sure there's more to add to the list (on both sides) but yeah. He had a tragic life but he absolutely did not have to treat other people the way he did, and keeping Harry alive (while simultaneously being horrible to him) is not enough to redeem him.

[Whistler]

I think part of Snape's appeal is that even though he's awful and evil at times, he has some human moments. Maybe not enough though, when you put it that way .