Good debating material.
The Economist has another article in this week’s issue that explores the hidden cost of ethanol. This time it has to do with the amount of water that ethanol plants require for production. Again, this goes to show that there is a cost to everything and we shouldn’t embrace something just because it sounds green – environmental policy should be closely scrutinized, just like any other public policy.
AP has an article which makes interesting reading and re-enforces something that I’ve always believed in. Essentially, a new study believes that
“Using good cropland to expand biofuels will probably exacerbate global warming,” concludes the study published in Science magazine.
This is the classic other side of the coin, and just goes further to show how important it is apply the same amount of scrutiny for environmental policies as we do for other policies. Just because going green is popular and occupies higher moral ground doesn’t mean green policies make sense.
Of course, whether this study is accurate or not needs re-evaluation; but that doesn’t hinder my case, since closer scrutiny is exactly what I’m calling for.
As a side note, this kind of material is perfect for debating. It shows depth of thought, turns the tables on a many arguments that people love to use (it’s always an uphill battle to debate for anti-environmentalism), carries the argument to the next level, and generally makes you look good in front of the judges. Pity I don’t debate anymore.
As a debating fan, needless to say I was quite excited when I first heard of this film. And on the whole it meets my expectations, though there were some aspects which could have been done better.
Directed by and starring Denzel Washington, the film is based on the true story of the African American debating team of Wiley College in the 1930s. The source material is great: racism and the fight against inequality are central themes, and they fit naturally in a film about debating – since these themes have been eternal topics of real debates, both in debating competitions and of course in society at large. In the film, the plot naturally blends together the African American students’ fight against racism in real life with their fight against it on-stage.
And I couldn’t help but envy them for that – from my own debating experience, that really is the dream of any debater – to be on-stage, and persuasively argue for a cause that you passionately believe in. Not in every debate, or rather, only in few debates, will you have the luxury of doing that.
Enough of my own sentiments – regarding the film, my only disappointment was that the overall end-product seemed somewhat too generic of an underdog film – you could find many films where you had characters fighting an uphill battle, and while it was inspiring, it didn’t feel original. But maybe that’s asking for too much.
I do have another complaint, though, about the film changing the identity of the team that they debated finally – from USC to Harvard, “since Harvard had a better reputation”. It is understandable for works of art to alter real events to gain better artistic effects, but such a change doesn’t sound off well with what I see as the central virtue of debating – honesty.
7/10
Today is the final day. After finishing our own EFL final yesterday, I was in a particularly light mood, hoping to enjoy some great debating.
In the morning I was in the Semi which had Alaska, one of the teams I was rooting for. Unfortunately they were Opening Gov in a quite frustrating motion (I thought), that websites glorifying eating disorders should be banned. They mainly defined it as a debate on fashion websites, which I thought wasn’t as advantageous as they could have made it.
At noon, we traveled to UBC for the last time. After lunch we walked around the campus for a bit, finding it to be much larger than we had formerly thought. My teammate found the Museum of Anthropology, which she was greatly interested in. And therefore she skipped the ESL final for it.
I didn’t. The ESL final motion was that politicians have the right to a private life, which I thought was quite a cliche topic. Or maybe that’s because I personally have seen it too many times in Debatabase probably. The Indian team which was opening Gov did not do a good job of really defining the debate: it was their duty and to their advantage that they define it to a specific type of behavior which they want to consider as private. Unfortunately they didn’t, which meant the Opp could talk about all sorts of stuff from business transactions to the obvious sex issues. And because they didn’t narrow down the debate, they couldn’t draw the crucial line between what is private and what is public. And that’s a line they have to draw, or they’ll get eaten alive by the Opp. Which was what happened.
The Grand Final was on a motion which I thought must be debated at this year’s Worlds. I was surprised that we didn’t meet any topics on environmentalism so far (since there were so many debates in the real world on this topic this year, with the Stern report et al.); as it turns out, they saved it for the final. The motion: economic development is the solution to climate change. I thought it could be a classic debate between conservatives and environmentalists. However that wasn’t the way it turned out: Opening Gov defined their motion as that they will set up a global carbon trading system, which will develop the economy and solve the pollution problem. Which I thought was quite a tricky definition. Opening Opp duly proposed a counter-prop of setting up a flat carbon tax, which they thought was better. So it got down to a classic economics question: using the market force or using the tax? I thought neither side really got down to explaining the crucial differences, and the debate itself would have got too technical anyways (it already was). Therefore it wasn’t as enjoyable as could have been.
Heading back to the Sheraton, we awaited the final results. It was delayed, so that the adjudicators could discuss it more. Finally we had things started at around 8:15. Which was good for me, since I fell asleep and could have missed the whole thing. Which would have been very unfortunate since we had won the EFL competition!
Quite a indoors day. Woke up quite late, almost at noon, due to the staying up late yesterday to hear the breaks.
Because we were in the EFL final, due to be held later in the evening, we decided not to make ourselves too tired. We went for a lunch, at a Chinese restaurant, and visited the downtown duty-free shop. I found the perfect gift.
It was raining heavily; so though we had planned to briefly see the Gastown area, that plan was hastily abandoned.
We went back to the hotel, where I duly slept all afternoon instead of doing any real preparations. As we got ready for the final, we were told that it was postponed. Probably because the council was still at meeting, no doubt delayed by the EFL/ESL issue… Oh well.
In the morning we had the EFL final, the motion being that sanctions on Iran should be lifted. We were Closing Gov. I thought it was a good position to be in. However, the Opening Gov put forward a very strange proposition, which I think was because they misunderstood the motion. The proposed that Nato should intervene and apply pressure on Iran (even war), and then help with the reconstruction. Maybe they thought “lift” meant increasing?
Because of that, the debate totally went astray in the first half, mainly focusing on the pros and cons of military aggression (which there isn’t much to debate about…). I tried as much as I could to pull things back to the original motion, but Closing Opp also spent a lot of time on the first half issues. Really don’t know how the judge would think of it.
Anyways, that’s my last debate.
After that, I got to listen to two great rounds of debates. The Octo-finals motion was that developing nations should nationalize their oil/gas industry. I heard a great debate that covered issues like what efficiency really meant and what is the sovereign right of the state. The Quarter-finals motion was that the state should give life sentence prisoners the choice to the death penalty. This was a harder debate, as a lot of it would be on the fundamentals of human rights and stuff.
3rd and last day of the preliminary rounds at this years championships.
Round 7: regime change in Myanmar/Burma. This was one of the more funny rounds, because many of the teams knew so little about the Myanmar situation. I heard one team actually mistook the motion to be about two different places… Anyways, we were Closing Opp, just the position to be in I guess when nobody knows what they’re talking about. The Closing Gov were also from China, so it’s a bit unfortunate that we totally took it on them… I felt we totally beat all the gov’s arguments, and turned their points against them. And therefore I think we won this one.
Round 8: banning cosmetic surgery. We were Opening Opp. Thanks to the Debatabase file we had, and thanks to the government defining it in exactly the same way as stated on the file, we could throw out lots and lots of arguments which they couldn’t do much about. But the Closing Gov also did a very good job. So it was hard to judge how we did in terms of rankings.
Round 9: citizenship in exchange for military service. Quite an anti-climax in terms of the round itself, as the government gave an elaborate model, and the Opening Opp not challenging it at all… We being Closing Gov, tried to bring in as much new material as we could, raising the issue of mercenaries and etc. But it was a poor round overall.
Then it was straight back to the Sheraton and the evening banquet. Can’t really say the food was great, but that’s never the point anyway. After some partying (well, not really great partying since you had to pay for your drinks, which led to me not getting any since it was so expensive), the results were announced after midnight. We made the break for the EFL final. I was interested to know how many points we actually had, and how that compared to the ESL breaking teams.
Day 2, and everything is on schedule! Definitely a good job by the orgs. Deserves praise.
Round 4, and the motion was that the payment of ransoms should be criminalized. We get opening opposition. I thought it was a good debate we made, though we were definitely overshadowed by closing opposition, who took every one of our arguments and took it one step further. At first I thought it was just a mere repackaging of our ideas with some big concepts and words; on second thought I decided that they did take the analysis deeper. I was very impressed. We got 2 points out of this round.
Round 5, and a debate on Quebec independence. Unfortunately we were Opening Gov, which meant we had a really bad round, just basically setting up the round for all later teams to bash us in. Closing Opp was HKU, and though it appeared that they didn’t know too much on the issue either, because of the more favorable position they were in, they were able to provide some stuff to the round and get on top of us. Another 0 pt game for us.
Round 6, and a debate on whether inherited wealth tax should be abolished or not. We were Opening Gov again. We didn’t do very well, but it was lucky that fellow Asian teams in OO and CG didn’t do much either. CO basically shut down all our arguments, and especially capitalized on one of our mistakes, regarding the social contract between the gov and the individual. Fortunate 2 pts from a lousy round I guess.
And that got us to 7 pts after 6 rounds. Basically meets my expectations. I was quite happy that we were improving our performance.
So, we finally get to the point where we actually get to debate!
Well, that was what I thought when I woke up in the morning. I was rather excited, after seeing yesterday’s masters. I thought I could bring some new ideas to the debate, and it would be an interesting experience sharing them with peers from other countries. The interaction would be very enlightening.
Of course, the fun part only starts when the debating starts. So meanwhile, we had to wait. And wait. And wait.
The waiting starts right after we get off the bus. Because we have so many people, we jammed the whole dining facility up right away. It was probably a 45 minute wait to finally get to the serving area. And then there was no food. Which lead to more wait. There’s probably a host of things the organizers can do to have prevented this, but I’m not going to get into that argument.
Then we moved to a fine sports hall, which was the main convention grounds where the motions are announced. Not enough seats were laid out for everyone, and the 3 projector screens were not really big enough. But enough of this moaning. We waited another hour while the organizers kept reminding us to sign in. Then the first round started.
The motion was whether state funding for religious schools should be banned. We were Closing Opposition. I thought it could have been a close debate, but we made quite a number of mistakes, which lead to us being last. But since it was our first ever British Parliamentary style debate, I didn’t really mind. I just wanted to get myself familiarized with the style and format. The Opening Opposition was quite solid: basically they had a clear structure and some very good ideas. They deserve to be first.
Lunch, and things were more smoothly done this time. Then more wait.
Second round was whether the UK should abolish its nuclear arsenal or not. We were Closing Government. Since the second half teams have to make extensions, I tried to make that my focus as I prepared. Unfortunately the Opening Government had a lot of the same arguments, and I think I was quite unclear myself which points I really wanted to talk about. That lead to my speech not really having clear extensions. Oh well, last place again.
More wait. We became literally quite exhausted at this stage. But I badly wanted to salvage something out of this day.
Which we did. The 3rd round of the day was over whether South Africa should support accelerated land redistribution. We were Closing Opposition. Well, frankly, we knew nothing about the background of this debate (and there’s a big big background apparently, as I researched it just now). Lucky for us, nobody else in the debate knew either. The Korean Opening Government and the Japanese Closing Government probably had a hard time preparing. To make things even more interesting, the Opening Opposition decided to quit, and we had a temporary swing team, which only had one person. She talked twice.
Anyways, because of all those twists and turns, I did feel like it was a comfortable win. We had some good arguments, and I think I did a better job organizing them.
After dinner, it was supposed to be a women’s night, with some theme activities, but most of us were too tired for that I guess. We hopped on a bus and got back to the hotel, where I crashed into the bed immediately.
After the hectic registration day, you’d think that the organizers would get themselves organized and get their act together. Well, that apparently wasn’t the case.
The day started off with 2 Masters rounds in the morning. It was supposed to start at 0930 as listed on the schedule; nothing really moved until 1000 or so, and the rounds didn’t start until 1030 or something. That being said, the rounds themselves were good and entertaining. The first debate was over whether we should have one permanent host city for the Olympics, the second was over whether the government should set up legalized safe injection facilities for drug addicts.
The first debate inevitably led to someone mentioning China’s human rights issue. Oh well, I can live with that. The second debate I witnessed was far more interesting, where I saw some good demonstration of speech skills covering up limited ideas. It’s probably also worth mentioning how excited the debaters can appear to be. I don’t know if they are acting or not.
In the afternoon we had briefings, and that’s where we got to know the organizers a bit better. Well, this is where the fun part starts. Not only are they disorganized, they are also disrespectful. Actually I don’t have a big issue over that – my own experience tells me that when you meet some people who you just don’t like, you just have to live with it; but coming from a country where respect is a big deal for a lot of people, and a university where student-run events are hugely efficient and organized, I do have to say that I’m getting plenty of laughs out of the current situation.
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