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Podcast Tonight

We are going to record a podcast tonight, so if you have questions post them in the comments. The more detailed your questions are the more likely they are to get answered. Questions that are super generic like “why is condo good” are most likely to be dismissed. Questions about how to answer specific arguments [...]

Streamlining the paperless process for judges

While we (ok, mostly me) vent about the struggles debaters have with the paperless process (no need to really rehash them all is there?), there is one facet of the debate that we haven’t talked about much, post round decision time.

Winning a Coin Flip

For when you need that added elim edge If you’re looking for a way to randomize your choices in a given dilemma, put away that quarter. It’s useless. (Sorry, Two-Face.) But if you’re trying to game the game, flip away. Researchers at the University of British Columbiaproved it can work. After an argument about how to [...]

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Throwdown- Intrinsicness in specific instances

It’s been a while since I did a throwdown, and this is an issue that I have been thinking about for some time. I am going to defend intrinsicness in one specific instance, not in the abstract say it vs any da.

Bad Arguments

An interesting real world discussion over a recent op ed recommending Obama announce he will not seek re-election in order to foster bipartisanship. This was less of a problem in the bad old days, when powerful gatekeepers to the opinion industry weeded out the non-mainstream viewpoints. Of course, the best and the brightest of the mainstream had some [...]

Site Upgrades

We have made two recent upgrades to The 3NR that we hope will improve your user experience. First, we have installed IntenseDebate, a feature-rich commenting system that includes comment threading, commenter profiles, reputation points, and robust connections to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. You can now log-in to The 3NR using an Intense [...]

Getting Better at Debate: Tips for Developing a Personal Debate Curriculum

Last month, The 3NR published the first in a series of articles intended to help answer the most difficult question that debate coaches are frequently asked: “How do I get better at debate?”. Many committed students are frustrated when their hard work does not produce winning records. At times, it can seem like banging one’s [...]

Cap and Peace

The Journal International Interactions has a recent issue with a series of articles discussing the capitalist peace theory along with contributons/critiques of the work by Gartzke which has been used extensively in K debates recently (he provides the statistical evidence cited in a lot of recent CATO et al evidence defending cap /trade)

Asking better cx questions vs a K

Many people follow a script when debating any kind of K and ask the same cross x questions regardless of what the neg’s argument is. These questions often follow a general trend started at a camp or by a dominant team, and like fashion trends they can’t all be fleece vests- some are going to [...]