Respond: Identifying an Issue
RESPOND •
Working with a group of colleagues, generate a list of twenty favorite “mysteries” explored on TV shows, in blogs, or in tabloid newspapers. Here are three to get you started — the alien crash landing at Roswell, the existence of Atlantis, and the uses of Area 51. Then decide which — if any — of these puzzlers might be resolved or explained in a reasonable factual argument and which ones remain eternally mysterious and improbable. Why are people attracted to such topics? Would any of these items provide material for a noteworthy factual argument?