Inspired by the list of camp affirmatives that was compiled by Christina Tallungan, Alex Agne of Detroit Country Day School has compiled a list of the disadvantages that were produced at this summer’s institutes. The complete list (in alphabetical order) is below the fold.
In response to the “bad cards” post about the popular “Corsi 2005” impact to terrorism, many readers requested suggestions for different cards that could be read to support the same basic argument. This is a difficult task; it is unlikely that a terrorist attack—even one using a nuclear device—would result in the extinction of humanity. But if that’s the argument you want to make, Akshay Bhushan from Greenhill School has cut an excellent card that he was nice enough to share here on The 3NR. Defenders of the Corsi evidence now have no excuse to continuing reading that card.
Nuclear terrorism is an existential threat—it escalates to nuclear war with Russia and China.
Robert Ayson, Professor of Strategic Studies and Director of the Centre for Strategic Studies: New Zealand at the Victoria University of Wellington, 2010 (“After a Terrorist Nuclear Attack: Envisaging Catalytic Effects,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Volume 33, Issue 7, July, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via InformaWorld)
The Crowdsourced List of Critical IR and Critical Security Studies Journals has been updated to include links to most of the publications that have been recommended. I have also created a Google Reader Bundle that includes all of the listed journals as well as several others that I think will be helpful when researching the 2010-2011 military/police presence topic. You’ll still need to access the journals/articles through a subscribing institution, but this way you’ll be notified whenever a new issue is posted. If anyone has suggestions for adding new journals to the bundle, please let me know.
On the heels of yesterday’s introduction to critiques, many students are probably delving into critical international relations and critical security studies literature for the first time. In an effort to improve the quality of the critique research that occurs in preparation for next season’s debates, I would like to compile a crowdsourced list of the best critical IR journals. Below the fold you will find my initial contributions; please post additional journals that I have omitted but which you believe to be high-quality sources of debate evidence in the comments.
The list was last updated on July 12, 2010.
Central to almost every high school policy debate round is the concept of causality: one event is said to cause a second event, either good or bad. Debates are laden with the language of causality: “X is key to Y” is the most popular phrasing of taglines, as in “deficit spending is key to the economy” or “military readiness is key to hegemony”. But what does it mean for one thing to cause another? Philosophers have been discussing this very question for millenia and there is no easy answer, but the concept of necessary and sufficient conditions is one way to make sense out of claims of causality.
What is the difference between a necessary condition and a sufficient condition? And how can debaters use these concepts to improve their debating?
The Center for Economic and Policy Research posted a blog entry today by Shawn Fremstad entitled “How Do We Correct Misinformation in Public Policy Debates?”. The author cites a recent article in The Forum about the health care debate and the role that misconceptions played in it. Both Fremstad’s post and the journal article—by Brendan Nyhan, the Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan—are interesting reads that provide important insights into the way that public policy arguments are won and lost. Fremstad’s conclusion, in particular, seems like prudent advice for debaters:
Where does this leave us then when we’re responding/defending against misinformation in the public sphere or even in non-elite private ones, like discussions with friends and family? Instead of just providing the fact or data that rebuts misinformation in a narrow or technical sense, it’s important to identify the frame or mental preconceptions that likely underlie or reinforce the misinformation, and then come up with an argument or response that seeks to undermine or replace those broader preconceptions as much as it does the specific piece of misinformation.
Beyond this particular article, however, The Forum is an excellent journal that every debater should add to their bookmarks and RSS feeds. Published four times per year, each issue focuses on one subject that is timely and important. The July 2009 issue, for example, focused on immigration policy and will be highly useful for college debaters researching next year’s resolution. The journal is available free of charge to “guests” via The Berkeley Electronic Press, itself an essential source of electronic journals.
In February, we announced the creation of The 3NR Spirit of Disclosure Award to recognize the team that best represents the spirit of disclosure throughout the season. In announcing this Award, we established five criteria: completeness of information, organization of information, consistency of disclosure, responsiveness to requests, and post-season disclosure practices. Our goal was for this Award to become a coveted honor that would motivate students and teams to improve their disclosure practices for the benefit of the entire community. After just a few months, we are confident that this has indeed been the case and have plans to continue (and perhaps expand) this Award in the future.
After careful review of The National Debate Coaches’ Association National Argument List wiki that took into account the stated criteria, the writers of The 3NR have submitted their ballots and the votes have been tabulated. Each ballot included an ordinal ranking of five teams and the results were then compiled by assigning a point value to each placement (5 points for a #1 ranking, 4 points for a #2 ranking, 3 points for a #3 ranking, 2 points for a #4 ranking, and 1 point for a #5 ranking). The authors were free to name any team on their ballot; there was no list of finalists from which to choose and there was no set criteria that must be followed.
Despite the open-ended nature of the voting system, the results were very consistent across all three ballots. In total, seven teams appeared on at least one ballot and three teams appeared on all three. The top five teams (as well as two honorable mentions) are listed below the fold along with an explanation of their placement. In parentheses, each team’s rankings on the individual judges’ ballots is also provided (in the order of Bill, Scott, and Roy).
Congratulations to all of the teams that received votes.
Most teams will be traveling to the Tournament of Champions tomorrow and the writers of The 3NR are no exception. While our primary responsibilities this weekend will involve coaching the team from Woodward Academy, we will be doing our best to provide live coverage of the TOC for those following along at home. Our coverage will start tomorrow night, so stay tuned throughout the weekend.
As a special gift to our readers, a few excellent cards that can be used to answer word PICs (and “bad word” critiques) are posted below the fold. You’ll have to tag and underline them yourselves, but I just cut them today from a hard-to-find book and thought that others would appreciate having this evidence in their arsenals at the TOC. Enjoy—and safe travels to Lexington!
One of the affirmatives that was produced during the summer at both the Baylor and Northwestern institutes advocated a change in the Federal Poverty Measure in order to provide more needy individuals with access to means-tested social services. To the best of my knowledge, however, no teams have consistently read this affirmative during the season—at least not on the national circuit. Will this be a popular new case at this weekend’s Tournament of Champions? A few thoughts about the viability of this affirmative are below the fold.
Even as the season is entering its final few months (and for many, final few weeks), it is still possible to uncover excellent sources of evidence. While doing some TOC research, I came across a journal called Challenge: A Magazine of Economic Affairs that contains many very useful articles about this year’s topic. You’ll need access to MetaPress, but most university libraries seem to have subscriptions. If nothing else, it is a good source to add to your list of economics and public policy journals to check out every few months.
Below the fold is a free card from a recent issue of Challenge from noted communitarian Amitai Etzioni that provides a clear, persuasive response to the thesis of many “free market good” arguments.
Recent Comments