Should animals have rights?

That’s the question being asked on NHPR’s Socrates Exchange show for February. Here’s what I want you to do.

Open an OpenOffice text document and save it with the title: Should animals have rights?

Here are some more questions that NHPR’s Socrates Exchange wants its listeners to consider:

“Are non-human animals merely a natural resource for human use? Do we have a responsibility to treat animals with dignity or to consider their suffering? Are we justified killing mosquitoes or pigs while pampering our pets? Do “smarter” creatures deserve more rights? If an animal is more intelligent than a cognitively disabled human, does the animal deserve more rights?”

—from NHPR’s Socrates Exchange for February 2010

Before you begin writing, copy and paste this whole post into your OpenOffice text document.

1. Write a response to this question. Think before you write.

2. Make sure the text document is formatted in Times New Roman and 12 point font.
3. Your response should be at least 6 to 10 sentences long.
4. Proofread your response aloud in your head.
5. Your response should be free of all GUMS.
6. Clearly explain your position on the question.

Do not post a comment here on the blog.

Are we alone? That’s the question National Geographic posed to its readers in the December 2009 issue. By the end of class today, you must post a response on the blog.

First, in your table group, discuss this question. Take notes in your geography/history journal.

Next read the National Geographic article in the December 2009 issue, “Are We Alone?” Check out all the graphics that go along with the article. Use the text to speech utility that I showed you last week. Wear your ear buds or headphones.

Remember to write, edit, and save your post first on your Think account. Copy and paste it into the blog.

Think back to last week and our discussion about what makes a great blog post. You get to decide what is your best post, the one from last week or this week.

Posting your writing online is something that we will be using all the time. In fact, it will be required of you in college and the world after college as well as high school. It is a new genre of writing that does not always give you the time to go through multiple drafts, but it does need to look like final draft writing in quality, style and content. Besides all of that, the world becomes your reader. That is a great feature and an awesome responsibilty.

In your table group today you need to come up with a checklist of 5 to 8 bullets that characterize a great blog post. Follow these steps:

*Take notes in your journal on a clean left-hand page.
*Title it: What makes a great blog post.
*Write the 5 to 8 bullets in complete sentences.
*Each member of the group should have the same information.

Before you do this, read your own blog post.

Next, decide how your group will divide-up the reading of the other posts. Read as many posts as you can. Take your own notes about what makes a good post. Then have a group discussion and come up with a final group list of 5 to 8 bullet points.

Each group will present their findings to the whole class.

Since the Christmas day terror attempt, airport security has been tightened and questions have been raised about why the U.S. government didn’t “connect the dots” beforehand. What was your reaction to this news story and its aftermath?

In his column “The God That Fails” , David Brooks writes that “After Sept. 11, we Americans indulged our faith in the god of technocracy” and now “we seem to expect perfection from government and then throw temper tantrums when it is not achieved.”

All this money and technology seems to have reduced the risk of future attack. But, of course, the system is bound to fail sometimes. Reality is unpredictable, and no amount of computer technology is going to change that. Bureaucracies are always blind because they convert the rich flow of personalities and events into crude notations that can be filed and collated. Human institutions are always going to miss crucial clues because the information in the universe is infinite and events do not conform to algorithmic regularity.

Resilient societies have a level-headed understanding of the risks inherent in this kind of warfare.

But, of course, this is not how the country has reacted over the past week. There have been outraged calls for Secretary Janet Napolitano of the Department of Homeland Security to resign, as if changing the leader of the bureaucracy would fix the flaws inherent in the bureaucracy. There have been demands for systemic reform — for more protocols, more layers and more review systems.

Students: Tell us what you think about the terror attempt and our national reaction to it. Do you agree with Mr. Brooks that we need to understand that “human systems fail”? What do you think the government can or should be doing? Why?

Make sure you respond in 5 to 8 thoughtful sentences with no repetition. Proofread your response out loud in your head to make sure it makes sense and addresses the questions asked. Write your response first on Think and save it.