searching for a subject for a debate

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lemon
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03 Dec 2006, 10:05 am

we have to prepare a three page preparation for a debate, this debate will be our exam.
does anyone have a good idea ?
it needs to be a topic with a lot of pro and cons



KBABZ
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03 Dec 2006, 7:34 pm

The cliche` one we get at our school is 'Clean and Green Power Sources'. Basically Power sources such as Oil and Coal against others like Hydroelectric and Solar.


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Awesomelyglorious
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04 Dec 2006, 2:54 am

Taxation rates, big vs small government, pretty much most things in politics can be set into a good debate with pros and cons.



Claradoon
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04 Dec 2006, 4:04 am

The right to be born, the right to die.



lemon
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05 Dec 2006, 7:24 am

i think the environment is the most important thing, so discussing about that is something i would like, but on the other hand i have to write a three page prepartion, also with why we shouldn't then,
apart from ignoring the fact it is the most important thing (for personal profits or lazyness), i don't see why one shouldn't.

for the taxes i'm not able to write three pages about it

and the right to live and to die, what do you mean excately?

why i think it is difficult to come up with a subject, is because we have to prepare the pros and the cons, although i think is a very interesting task, it does exclude a lot of topics as well.



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05 Dec 2006, 10:28 am

The right to live and die is probably referring to topics such as abortion and euthenasia.

If you do something on the environment, green chemistry is something worth looking into. That is basically using compounds to run reactions that will not pollute the air as much or be as toxic. The con is that these compounds are usually not as efficient in how much percent product yield they produce.


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lemon
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05 Dec 2006, 12:09 pm

hm , you seem to be documented, you happen to have any links to an interesting article?



Awesomelyglorious
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05 Dec 2006, 12:31 pm

lemon wrote:
for the taxes i'm not able to write three pages about it

If you aren't interested in the subject then it could be hard, you'd have to do some research I'd suppose. I just thought of that because I know a few friends doing 10 page papers on only one taxation idea, and because taxation is something that there is controversy about, in terms of progressiveness, morality, need for governmental services, economic growth, whether or not the Bush tax cuts were justified, ways of levying it, etc, it might have been ok although picking where to start with a view on taxes might have been hard.

There is also the minimum wage, which can be broken up easily into 2 different sides. This goes into things such as human wellbeing, economic efficiency, the nature of capitalism, history and the minimum wage, positive and negative rights, possibly even racism and the minimum wage, etc.

Heck, you could actually make an argument very easily on Capitalism vs Socialism, digressing into the moral debate, the economic efficiency debate, the historical views, the nature of both and how they do or can work, etc.

Sorry about digressing so much though.

The right to live and right to die are really somewhat simple, either you believe in abortion and euthanasia being good or you don't. I suppose you can stretch this out quite a bit with going into rights for euthanasia, economic efficiency, and human welfare, as well as the morality of suicide, and for abortion go into the nature of when life starts, possibly crime rates and abortion, rights and abortion, and black market abortion(aka the coat hanger method).

With an environmental question you would have to focus on whether green measures are justified or whether they are wasting resources. So, if you wanted to do the non-environmental side, you might bash global warming, argue that recycling is wasteful, state that most environmental problems are overstated, and pretty much try to attack any view on the environment being innately valuable but rather focus on its subservience to human desires.

Really, I don't think that having to write pros and cons out really limits your choice of topics that much outside of having to focus on a semi-serious topic with logically coherent sides.



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05 Dec 2006, 8:48 pm

lemon wrote:
hm , you seem to be documented, you happen to have any links to an interesting article?


I'm a chemist by training, so most of it is stuff that I've heard professors talk about. If you do a google search for "green chemistry", there should be some stuff out there. :)


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