204th Meeting

Tonight we had two presenters, Maryam and Kalen, who both presented humorous and yet morally infused tales for their next speech projects. Maryam told us about the Car that wouldn't Drive, and Kalen about... The Affliction -- Fantasy sports, which are the leading cause of obesity in America, if you believe his humorous tale.

As for our impromptu speech section, I led many members and guests to discuss various decisions they have made in their lives, from scary life decisions to the decor of their rooms.

As a reminder, any new guests who visit our meetings may be asked to give a 1-2 minute impromptu speech related to the topic of the meeting. They may opt out, if they so choose.

203rd meeting

It is ugly, is is beauty, it constrains us, it sets us free, it is sought by all people, it is overlooked by all people—in short, the truth is a topic that is so much as interesting as our past meeting themes, that our Table Topics master insisted that questions we fielded about it, whether we were new or old to the speaking game, provided a superlative degree of practice only. The truth also requires me to give credit to Charles Dickens for the structure of the last sentence and, I suppose, to our prepared speaker for a tightly-structured speech about how to safely commute to UT on a bicycle.

202nd Meeting

It's always interesting to discover the variety of people that an institute like UT draws in, and our meeting this evening reflected such diversity.

In a prepared speech, our member Xiang related to us the tale of an old Chinese war that was reputedly started by foxes, but was fueled by the greed and nature of humanity. In table topics, the impromptu speech sections, we discussed everything from American culture-shock to professions such as elephant poop-scoopers. You had to have been there. Unfortunately, it's too late now -- but you CAN be at our meeting this Friday, at our normal location, at 5:55 PM!

201st Meeting

Hi all!

Today's theme was silence, and it sparked lots of conversation. For example, does the tree falling in the woods make a noise if no one is listening? It turns out that a scientific explanation - i.e. that an ear is required to register noise - provides a straightforward answer; however, this question has more value in philosophy. In discussing the philosophical side, we had to consider the role of the living in the wider universe, and to question what occurs beyond our senses.

Our one prepared speech was given by Thomas today, concerning the different methods of crafting one's words to convey information. When should we use the socratic method or the reflective method, as opposed to saying immediately saying what we mean?

200th Meeting

"When ideas run out" was our theme. Given the imagination our members displayed in asking and answering questions about this theme, it doesn't look like we'll be running out of ideas anytime soon. Our prepared speaker also told us an imaginative story set in the context of the SETI project. Although I dismissed, as a far-fetched story, the remark of one speaker that aliens may be the ultimate source of our ideas, ideas about aliens seems to make for many entertaining stories.