Question:
Monitoring is lazy parenting.

The proposition substitutes the good, old-fashioned way of teaching children how to be responsible, with invasions of their privacy, so violating an inherent rights [1]. Such parenting is called remote-control parenting. Parents who monitor their children’s digital behavior feel that they satisfactorily fulfil their parental role when in fact they are being lazy and uninvolved in the growth of their child. Children, especially the youngest, are “dependent upon their parents and require an intense and intimate relationship with their parents to satisfy their physical and emotional needs.” This is called a psychological attachment theory. Responsible parents would instead spend more time with their children teaching them about information management, when to and when not to disclose information, and interaction management, when to and when not to interact with others. [2] That parents have the ability to track their children is true, but doing so is not necessarily likely to make them better adults [3]. The key is for parents and children to talk regularly about the experiences of the child online. This is a process that cannot be substituted by parental monitoring.

[1] United Nations Children’s Fund. Implementation Handbook for the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Fully revised 3rd edition. Geneva. United Nations Publications. Google Search. Web. May 2013.

[2] Shmueli, Benjamin, and Ayelet Blecher-Prigat. “Privacy for Children.” Columbia Human Rights Review. Rev. 759 (2010-2011): 760-795. Columbia Law School. Web. May 2013.

[3] “You Can Track Your Kids. But Should You?” New York Times. 27 June 2012: 1. New York Times. May 2013.

Opposition claims that monitoring is ‘laziness’. Admittedly, monitoring makes digital parenting more efficient and comprehensive. But, such technology makes parenting practical, not ‘lazy’. As it is, many people blame technology for their own shortcomings. [1] Thus, parents need to know that monitoring will not do all the work for them. It is not lazy to monitor your children, it is clearly essential that children are monitored when involved in activities such as sports. The internet is a dangerous environment just as the sports field is and should have similar adult supervision.

[1] Bradley, Tony. “Blaming Technology for Human Error: Trying To Fix Social Problems With Technical Tools.” About. About. 30 Mar 2005.

The complications in the legal framework are not reason to eliminate intellectual property rights. In fact, most licensing arrangements are done swiftly and amicably between firms. Intellectual property battles over licensing arrangements are the exception rather than the rule. With intellectual property, firms feel free to share openly through licensing. Without it, they will be more reticent to share anything.

Theists and atheists alike use ‘methodological naturalism’ when doing science, because scientific method depends on understanding and explaining the natural world in natural terms. It does not assume that God does not exist. Many Christians do not believe that the evidence supports Creationism despite believing in God, and instead believe that God is the one who sustains and upholds the natural order as understood by science.

Uniformitarianism is a necessary assumption for understanding the world. If the laws of nature changed on a whim, so that science worked one way on Tuesday and another on Wednesday, we would not be able to make observations and predictions that worked. But all our observations indicate that the world does operate consistently. The success of science in providing accurate models and explanations of the world shows that its presuppositions are correct.

Science cannot prove or disprove the existence of God, since that is a metaphysical question outside the scope of science. But science can show that evolution explains the origins of life, and there is no need to invoke a God of the Gaps to explain it. The supernatural is outside the scope of scientific enquiry, and therefore a matter of faith.

This again highlights some of the problems with animal research. In the UK example cited, animal testing had been done, and the dose given to the human volunteers was a tiny fraction of the dose shown to be safe in primates. Animal research is an unreliable indicator of how drugs will react in the human body, and as such alternatives should be sought and improved upon.

Governments do not have a monopoly on the knowledge of what is best for their people and even the people may themselves make a mistake when deciding on whether to be an open society. Thus even if it appears that many people support censorship it may be legitimate to undermine it. In particular is people have never had a chance to experience life without that censorship how can they be considered to be making an informed choice when deciding to live with censorship?

Most developed countries, including the United States and the member-states of the European Union, have regulations and laws which require the research methods that do not involve animal models should be used wherever they would produce equally accurate results. In other words, scientists are barred from using animals in research where non-animal methods would be just as effective.

Further, research animals are extremely expensive to breed, house and care for. Developed countries have very strict laws governing the welfare of animals used in research; obtaining the training and expert advice required to comply with these laws is costly. As a result, academic institutions and medical or pharmaceutical businesses function under constant pressure to find viable alternatives to using animals in research. Researchers have a strong motive to use alternatives to animal models wherever possible.

If we ban animal research even if research advances continue we will never know how much further and faster that research could have gone with the aid of experiments on animals. Animal research conducted today produces higher quality results than alternative research methodologies, and is thus it is likely necessary for it to remain in order for us to enjoy the rate of scientific advancement we have become used to in recent years. [1] Precisely because we never know where the next big breakthrough is going to come, we do not want to be narrowing research options. Instead, all options - computer models, tissue cultures, microdosing and animal experiments - should be explored, making it more likely that there will be a breakthrough.

[1] Ator, N. A., “Conducting Behavioural Research”, in Akins, C. Panicker, S. & Cunningham, C. L (eds.), Laboratory animals in research and teaching: Ethics, care and methods, (Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association, 2005, Ch. 3.

No one can own an idea. Thus creating something like a property right over intangible assets is a meaningless endeavour. Doing so gives monopoly power to individuals who may not make efficient or equitable use of their inventions or products. Physical property is a tangible asset, and thus can be protected by tangible safeguards. Ideas do not share this right to protection, because an idea, once spoken, enters the public domain and belongs to anyone who can use it.

There is still a need for expertise: although they make manufacturing easier, 3D printers require knowledge that most people do not have. Most people will still be unable to create most products from scratch (and it may be dangerous to try). Individuals will therefore still have to rely on companies for their everyday needs. It is also untrue that they will never have to leave their home, since they will also need to purchase and transport printing materials.

Schools should teach what is true. Evolution is one of the most robust theories in contemporary science; it is not the place of communities to propagate lies, even if they are more in keeping with their religious beliefs. Indoctrinating children and denying them access to real science, which happens even if Creationism and evolution are given "equal time", is to fundamentally compromise the value of education [1] . It is an inculcation of false belief to suit a communal goal of maintaining a set of beliefs that may not stand up to scientific scrutiny. The Creationists cannot win in the scientific arena because they are not scientists so they have decided to try to subvert the political system. Their goal is to undermine science and reason, and they must be stopped.

[1] Rooney, Brian and Melia Patria. 2008. “Because the Bible Tells Me So?”. ABC News.

China won’t budge that easily

China has already faced trade sanctions for its human rights abuses for years, in particular there are bans on arms sales by the European Union that are still in place more than twenty years after the Tiananmen Square massacre that precipitated them. [1] These haven’t helped a bit. [2] Why would a relatively small move like Google stopping its censorship work?

Moreover: true reform in China has to come from within. When it’s forced from the outside, it will not be accepted. If Google stops cooperating with the government, reform-minded Chinese officials will have a harder time, because they will seem to be losing face in the eyes of more hardline officials. [3]

[1] See debate on EU arms sales to china

[2] James Dorn, ‘Improving Human Rights in China’, February 8, 1999. URL: http://www.freetrade.org/node/169

[3] Shaun Rein, ‘Opposing View: Google’s Big Mistake’, March 28, 2010. URL: http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2010-03-29-editorial29_ST1_N.htm

Freedom of speech is important, but must be curtailed when people are threatened. Extremists are a very real threat because their messages and actions galvanize people to take violent, disruptive actions against the state and its citizens. ISPs have a right, and even a responsibility to block extremist websites if it is written into the contract when a user purchases the service. When people opt into an ISP they accept the parameters of the service, so their freedom is not being limited by the blocking of extremist content as they have already accepted that extremist websites are not a part of the access package they bought.

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Monitoring is a hindrance to forming relationships both outside and inside the family.

If children are being monitored, or if it seems to children that they are being monitored, they would immediately lose trust in their parents. As trust is reciprocal, children will also learn not to trust others. This will result in their difficulty in forging human connections, thereby straining their psychosocial growth. For them to learn how to trust therefore, children must know that they can break their parents’ trust (as said by the proposition before). This will allow them to understand, obey, and respect their parents on their own initiative, allowing them to respect others in the same manner as well. [1] This growth would only be possible if parents refuse this proposition and instead choose to educate their children how to be responsible beforehand.

[1] Shmueli, Benjamin, and Ayelet Blecher-Prigat. “Privacy for Children.” Columbia Human Rights Review. Rev. 759 (2010-2011): 760-795. Columbia Law School. Web. May 2013.

It is true that trust is a cornerstone of relationships. Admittedly, the act of monitoring may initially stimulate feelings of distrust which are particularly destructive in relationships. But nonetheless, trust is earned, not granted. The only proactive way to gauge how much trust and responsibility to give a child in the digital world is monitoring. By monitoring a child, parents come to assess the initial capability of the child in digital responsibility and ultimately the level of trust and the level of responsibility he or she deserves and to be assigned subsequently. Ideally, the initial level of monitoring and follow-through should be maximum in order to make clear to the child that he is being guided. Only when a child proves himself and grows in digital maturity can monitoring and follow-through be gradually minimized and finally lifted. [1]

[1] Bodenhamer, Gregory. Parents in Control. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995 Inc. Web. May 2013.

The complications in the legal framework are not reason to eliminate intellectual property rights. In fact, most licensing arrangements are done swiftly and amicably between firms. Intellectual property battles over licensing arrangements are the exception rather than the rule. With intellectual property, firms feel free to share openly through licensing. Without it, they will be more reticent to share anything.

Theists and atheists alike use ‘methodological naturalism’ when doing science, because scientific method depends on understanding and explaining the natural world in natural terms. It does not assume that God does not exist. Many Christians do not believe that the evidence supports Creationism despite believing in God, and instead believe that God is the one who sustains and upholds the natural order as understood by science.

Uniformitarianism is a necessary assumption for understanding the world. If the laws of nature changed on a whim, so that science worked one way on Tuesday and another on Wednesday, we would not be able to make observations and predictions that worked. But all our observations indicate that the world does operate consistently. The success of science in providing accurate models and explanations of the world shows that its presuppositions are correct.

Science cannot prove or disprove the existence of God, since that is a metaphysical question outside the scope of science. But science can show that evolution explains the origins of life, and there is no need to invoke a God of the Gaps to explain it. The supernatural is outside the scope of scientific enquiry, and therefore a matter of faith.

This again highlights some of the problems with animal research. In the UK example cited, animal testing had been done, and the dose given to the human volunteers was a tiny fraction of the dose shown to be safe in primates. Animal research is an unreliable indicator of how drugs will react in the human body, and as such alternatives should be sought and improved upon.

Governments do not have a monopoly on the knowledge of what is best for their people and even the people may themselves make a mistake when deciding on whether to be an open society. Thus even if it appears that many people support censorship it may be legitimate to undermine it. In particular is people have never had a chance to experience life without that censorship how can they be considered to be making an informed choice when deciding to live with censorship?

Most developed countries, including the United States and the member-states of the European Union, have regulations and laws which require the research methods that do not involve animal models should be used wherever they would produce equally accurate results. In other words, scientists are barred from using animals in research where non-animal methods would be just as effective.

Further, research animals are extremely expensive to breed, house and care for. Developed countries have very strict laws governing the welfare of animals used in research; obtaining the training and expert advice required to comply with these laws is costly. As a result, academic institutions and medical or pharmaceutical businesses function under constant pressure to find viable alternatives to using animals in research. Researchers have a strong motive to use alternatives to animal models wherever possible.

If we ban animal research even if research advances continue we will never know how much further and faster that research could have gone with the aid of experiments on animals. Animal research conducted today produces higher quality results than alternative research methodologies, and is thus it is likely necessary for it to remain in order for us to enjoy the rate of scientific advancement we have become used to in recent years. [1] Precisely because we never know where the next big breakthrough is going to come, we do not want to be narrowing research options. Instead, all options - computer models, tissue cultures, microdosing and animal experiments - should be explored, making it more likely that there will be a breakthrough.

[1] Ator, N. A., “Conducting Behavioural Research”, in Akins, C. Panicker, S. & Cunningham, C. L (eds.), Laboratory animals in research and teaching: Ethics, care and methods, (Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association, 2005, Ch. 3.

No one can own an idea. Thus creating something like a property right over intangible assets is a meaningless endeavour. Doing so gives monopoly power to individuals who may not make efficient or equitable use of their inventions or products. Physical property is a tangible asset, and thus can be protected by tangible safeguards. Ideas do not share this right to protection, because an idea, once spoken, enters the public domain and belongs to anyone who can use it.

There is still a need for expertise: although they make manufacturing easier, 3D printers require knowledge that most people do not have. Most people will still be unable to create most products from scratch (and it may be dangerous to try). Individuals will therefore still have to rely on companies for their everyday needs. It is also untrue that they will never have to leave their home, since they will also need to purchase and transport printing materials.

Schools should teach what is true. Evolution is one of the most robust theories in contemporary science; it is not the place of communities to propagate lies, even if they are more in keeping with their religious beliefs. Indoctrinating children and denying them access to real science, which happens even if Creationism and evolution are given "equal time", is to fundamentally compromise the value of education [1] . It is an inculcation of false belief to suit a communal goal of maintaining a set of beliefs that may not stand up to scientific scrutiny. The Creationists cannot win in the scientific arena because they are not scientists so they have decided to try to subvert the political system. Their goal is to undermine science and reason, and they must be stopped.

[1] Rooney, Brian and Melia Patria. 2008. “Because the Bible Tells Me So?”. ABC News.

China won’t budge that easily

China has already faced trade sanctions for its human rights abuses for years, in particular there are bans on arms sales by the European Union that are still in place more than twenty years after the Tiananmen Square massacre that precipitated them. [1] These haven’t helped a bit. [2] Why would a relatively small move like Google stopping its censorship work?

Moreover: true reform in China has to come from within. When it’s forced from the outside, it will not be accepted. If Google stops cooperating with the government, reform-minded Chinese officials will have a harder time, because they will seem to be losing face in the eyes of more hardline officials. [3]

[1] See debate on EU arms sales to china

[2] James Dorn, ‘Improving Human Rights in China’, February 8, 1999. URL: http://www.freetrade.org/node/169

[3] Shaun Rein, ‘Opposing View: Google’s Big Mistake’, March 28, 2010. URL: http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2010-03-29-editorial29_ST1_N.htm

Freedom of speech is important, but must be curtailed when people are threatened. Extremists are a very real threat because their messages and actions galvanize people to take violent, disruptive actions against the state and its citizens. ISPs have a right, and even a responsibility to block extremist websites if it is written into the contract when a user purchases the service. When people opt into an ISP they accept the parameters of the service, so their freedom is not being limited by the blocking of extremist content as they have already accepted that extremist websites are not a part of the access package they bought.

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
This proposal is simply an invasion of privacy.

Children have as much right to privacy as any adult. Unfortunately there is yet to be a provision on the protection of privacy in either the United States Constitution or the Bill of Rights, though the Supreme Court states that the concept of privacy rooted within the framework of the Constitution. [1] This ambiguity causes confusion among parents regarding the concept of child privacy. Many maintain that privacy should be administered to a child as a privilege, not a right. [2] Fortunately, the UNCRC clearly states that “No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation,” [3] making child privacy an automatic right. Just as children should receive privacy in the real world, so too should they in the digital world. Individual rights, including right to privacy, shape intrafamilial relationships because they initiate individuality and independence. [1]

[1] Shmueli, Benjamin, and Ayelet Blecher-Prigat. “Privacy for Children.” Columbia Human Rights Review. Rev. 759 (2010-2011): 760-795. Columbia Law School. Web. May 2013. P.764

[2] Brenner, Susan. “The Privacy Privilege.” CYB3RCRIM3. Blogspot. 3 April 2009. May 2013.

[3] United Nations Children’s Fund. Implementation Handbook for the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Fully revised 3rd edition. Geneva. United Nations Publications. Google Search. Web. May 2013.

The individual right to privacy must certainly encompass the digital realm as proposition says. It is also undeniable that individual privacy enhances individuality and independence. However, this privacy can and should be regulated lest parents leave children ‘abandoned’ to their rights. [1] “One cannot compare reading a child’s journal to accessing his or her conversations online or through text messages,” says Betsy Landers, the president of the National Parent-Teacher Association of the US and explains, “It’s simply modern involvement.” [2] Thus, Hillary Clinton argues, “children should be granted rights, but in a stage-by-stage manner that accords with and pays attention to their physical and mental development and capacities.” [1] Applying this principle, children should be given digital privacy to an equitable extent and regulated whereby both conditions depend upon the maturity of the child.

[1] Shmueli, Benjamin, and Ayelet Blecher-Prigat. “Privacy for Children.” Columbia Human Rights Review. Rev. 759 (2010-2011): 760-795. Columbia Law School. Web. May 2013.

[2] Landers, Betty. “It’s Modern Parental Involvement.” New York Times. 28 June 2012: 1. New York Times. May 2013.

The complications in the legal framework are not reason to eliminate intellectual property rights. In fact, most licensing arrangements are done swiftly and amicably between firms. Intellectual property battles over licensing arrangements are the exception rather than the rule. With intellectual property, firms feel free to share openly through licensing. Without it, they will be more reticent to share anything.

Theists and atheists alike use ‘methodological naturalism’ when doing science, because scientific method depends on understanding and explaining the natural world in natural terms. It does not assume that God does not exist. Many Christians do not believe that the evidence supports Creationism despite believing in God, and instead believe that God is the one who sustains and upholds the natural order as understood by science.

Uniformitarianism is a necessary assumption for understanding the world. If the laws of nature changed on a whim, so that science worked one way on Tuesday and another on Wednesday, we would not be able to make observations and predictions that worked. But all our observations indicate that the world does operate consistently. The success of science in providing accurate models and explanations of the world shows that its presuppositions are correct.

Science cannot prove or disprove the existence of God, since that is a metaphysical question outside the scope of science. But science can show that evolution explains the origins of life, and there is no need to invoke a God of the Gaps to explain it. The supernatural is outside the scope of scientific enquiry, and therefore a matter of faith.

This again highlights some of the problems with animal research. In the UK example cited, animal testing had been done, and the dose given to the human volunteers was a tiny fraction of the dose shown to be safe in primates. Animal research is an unreliable indicator of how drugs will react in the human body, and as such alternatives should be sought and improved upon.

Governments do not have a monopoly on the knowledge of what is best for their people and even the people may themselves make a mistake when deciding on whether to be an open society. Thus even if it appears that many people support censorship it may be legitimate to undermine it. In particular is people have never had a chance to experience life without that censorship how can they be considered to be making an informed choice when deciding to live with censorship?

Most developed countries, including the United States and the member-states of the European Union, have regulations and laws which require the research methods that do not involve animal models should be used wherever they would produce equally accurate results. In other words, scientists are barred from using animals in research where non-animal methods would be just as effective.

Further, research animals are extremely expensive to breed, house and care for. Developed countries have very strict laws governing the welfare of animals used in research; obtaining the training and expert advice required to comply with these laws is costly. As a result, academic institutions and medical or pharmaceutical businesses function under constant pressure to find viable alternatives to using animals in research. Researchers have a strong motive to use alternatives to animal models wherever possible.

If we ban animal research even if research advances continue we will never know how much further and faster that research could have gone with the aid of experiments on animals. Animal research conducted today produces higher quality results than alternative research methodologies, and is thus it is likely necessary for it to remain in order for us to enjoy the rate of scientific advancement we have become used to in recent years. [1] Precisely because we never know where the next big breakthrough is going to come, we do not want to be narrowing research options. Instead, all options - computer models, tissue cultures, microdosing and animal experiments - should be explored, making it more likely that there will be a breakthrough.

[1] Ator, N. A., “Conducting Behavioural Research”, in Akins, C. Panicker, S. & Cunningham, C. L (eds.), Laboratory animals in research and teaching: Ethics, care and methods, (Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association, 2005, Ch. 3.

No one can own an idea. Thus creating something like a property right over intangible assets is a meaningless endeavour. Doing so gives monopoly power to individuals who may not make efficient or equitable use of their inventions or products. Physical property is a tangible asset, and thus can be protected by tangible safeguards. Ideas do not share this right to protection, because an idea, once spoken, enters the public domain and belongs to anyone who can use it.

There is still a need for expertise: although they make manufacturing easier, 3D printers require knowledge that most people do not have. Most people will still be unable to create most products from scratch (and it may be dangerous to try). Individuals will therefore still have to rely on companies for their everyday needs. It is also untrue that they will never have to leave their home, since they will also need to purchase and transport printing materials.

Schools should teach what is true. Evolution is one of the most robust theories in contemporary science; it is not the place of communities to propagate lies, even if they are more in keeping with their religious beliefs. Indoctrinating children and denying them access to real science, which happens even if Creationism and evolution are given "equal time", is to fundamentally compromise the value of education [1] . It is an inculcation of false belief to suit a communal goal of maintaining a set of beliefs that may not stand up to scientific scrutiny. The Creationists cannot win in the scientific arena because they are not scientists so they have decided to try to subvert the political system. Their goal is to undermine science and reason, and they must be stopped.

[1] Rooney, Brian and Melia Patria. 2008. “Because the Bible Tells Me So?”. ABC News.

China won’t budge that easily

China has already faced trade sanctions for its human rights abuses for years, in particular there are bans on arms sales by the European Union that are still in place more than twenty years after the Tiananmen Square massacre that precipitated them. [1] These haven’t helped a bit. [2] Why would a relatively small move like Google stopping its censorship work?

Moreover: true reform in China has to come from within. When it’s forced from the outside, it will not be accepted. If Google stops cooperating with the government, reform-minded Chinese officials will have a harder time, because they will seem to be losing face in the eyes of more hardline officials. [3]

[1] See debate on EU arms sales to china

[2] James Dorn, ‘Improving Human Rights in China’, February 8, 1999. URL: http://www.freetrade.org/node/169

[3] Shaun Rein, ‘Opposing View: Google’s Big Mistake’, March 28, 2010. URL: http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2010-03-29-editorial29_ST1_N.htm

Freedom of speech is important, but must be curtailed when people are threatened. Extremists are a very real threat because their messages and actions galvanize people to take violent, disruptive actions against the state and its citizens. ISPs have a right, and even a responsibility to block extremist websites if it is written into the contract when a user purchases the service. When people opt into an ISP they accept the parameters of the service, so their freedom is not being limited by the blocking of extremist content as they have already accepted that extremist websites are not a part of the access package they bought.

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Other parental controls are more practical and reasonable to administer.

Monitoring would be extremely tedious and time-consuming. Many teens send over 100 texts a day, it would clearly be very time consuming to read them all along with all other digital communication.[1] By contrast content filtering, contact management, and privacy protection parental controls, which can be used to block all incoming and outgoing information, require only minimal supervision. Parents who meanwhile deem their children immature when it comes to social networking and gaming can instead impose user restrictions on the relevant websites and devices. [2] Administering these alternative parental controls leave for more quality time with children. In this case, only when children acquire sufficient digital maturity and responsibility can these controls be lifted. As they have learnt to be mature in the digital environment the children would most likely continue to surf safely even when the parental controls are lifted.

[1] Goldberg, Stephanie, “Many teens send 100-plus texts a day, survey says”, CNN, 21 April 2010

[2] Burt, David. “Parental Controls Product Guide.” 2010 Edition. n.d. PDF File. Web. May 2013.

While it is practical to use these parental controls, it is not always realistic to set such limited parameters to the digital freedom of children. Children need to understand that they have the capacity to breach their parents’ trust. [1] This not only allows a child to understand how to interact sensibly with the internet, but to experience taking an initiative to actually obey parents in surfing only safe sites. Selectively restricting a child’s digital freedom does not help in this case. Thus, monitoring is the only way for children to experience digital freedom in such a way that they too are both closely guided and free to do as they wish. Moreover, this is also self-contradictory because opposition claimed that children are capable of circumvention which children would be much more likely to do when blocked from accessing websites than simply monitored.

[1] Shmueli, Benjamin, and Ayelet Blecher-Prigat. “Privacy for Children.” Columbia Human Rights Review. Rev. 759 (2010-2011): 760-795. Columbia Law School. Web. May 2013.

The complications in the legal framework are not reason to eliminate intellectual property rights. In fact, most licensing arrangements are done swiftly and amicably between firms. Intellectual property battles over licensing arrangements are the exception rather than the rule. With intellectual property, firms feel free to share openly through licensing. Without it, they will be more reticent to share anything.

Theists and atheists alike use ‘methodological naturalism’ when doing science, because scientific method depends on understanding and explaining the natural world in natural terms. It does not assume that God does not exist. Many Christians do not believe that the evidence supports Creationism despite believing in God, and instead believe that God is the one who sustains and upholds the natural order as understood by science.

Uniformitarianism is a necessary assumption for understanding the world. If the laws of nature changed on a whim, so that science worked one way on Tuesday and another on Wednesday, we would not be able to make observations and predictions that worked. But all our observations indicate that the world does operate consistently. The success of science in providing accurate models and explanations of the world shows that its presuppositions are correct.

Science cannot prove or disprove the existence of God, since that is a metaphysical question outside the scope of science. But science can show that evolution explains the origins of life, and there is no need to invoke a God of the Gaps to explain it. The supernatural is outside the scope of scientific enquiry, and therefore a matter of faith.

This again highlights some of the problems with animal research. In the UK example cited, animal testing had been done, and the dose given to the human volunteers was a tiny fraction of the dose shown to be safe in primates. Animal research is an unreliable indicator of how drugs will react in the human body, and as such alternatives should be sought and improved upon.

Governments do not have a monopoly on the knowledge of what is best for their people and even the people may themselves make a mistake when deciding on whether to be an open society. Thus even if it appears that many people support censorship it may be legitimate to undermine it. In particular is people have never had a chance to experience life without that censorship how can they be considered to be making an informed choice when deciding to live with censorship?

Most developed countries, including the United States and the member-states of the European Union, have regulations and laws which require the research methods that do not involve animal models should be used wherever they would produce equally accurate results. In other words, scientists are barred from using animals in research where non-animal methods would be just as effective.

Further, research animals are extremely expensive to breed, house and care for. Developed countries have very strict laws governing the welfare of animals used in research; obtaining the training and expert advice required to comply with these laws is costly. As a result, academic institutions and medical or pharmaceutical businesses function under constant pressure to find viable alternatives to using animals in research. Researchers have a strong motive to use alternatives to animal models wherever possible.

If we ban animal research even if research advances continue we will never know how much further and faster that research could have gone with the aid of experiments on animals. Animal research conducted today produces higher quality results than alternative research methodologies, and is thus it is likely necessary for it to remain in order for us to enjoy the rate of scientific advancement we have become used to in recent years. [1] Precisely because we never know where the next big breakthrough is going to come, we do not want to be narrowing research options. Instead, all options - computer models, tissue cultures, microdosing and animal experiments - should be explored, making it more likely that there will be a breakthrough.

[1] Ator, N. A., “Conducting Behavioural Research”, in Akins, C. Panicker, S. & Cunningham, C. L (eds.), Laboratory animals in research and teaching: Ethics, care and methods, (Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association, 2005, Ch. 3.

No one can own an idea. Thus creating something like a property right over intangible assets is a meaningless endeavour. Doing so gives monopoly power to individuals who may not make efficient or equitable use of their inventions or products. Physical property is a tangible asset, and thus can be protected by tangible safeguards. Ideas do not share this right to protection, because an idea, once spoken, enters the public domain and belongs to anyone who can use it.

There is still a need for expertise: although they make manufacturing easier, 3D printers require knowledge that most people do not have. Most people will still be unable to create most products from scratch (and it may be dangerous to try). Individuals will therefore still have to rely on companies for their everyday needs. It is also untrue that they will never have to leave their home, since they will also need to purchase and transport printing materials.

Schools should teach what is true. Evolution is one of the most robust theories in contemporary science; it is not the place of communities to propagate lies, even if they are more in keeping with their religious beliefs. Indoctrinating children and denying them access to real science, which happens even if Creationism and evolution are given "equal time", is to fundamentally compromise the value of education [1] . It is an inculcation of false belief to suit a communal goal of maintaining a set of beliefs that may not stand up to scientific scrutiny. The Creationists cannot win in the scientific arena because they are not scientists so they have decided to try to subvert the political system. Their goal is to undermine science and reason, and they must be stopped.

[1] Rooney, Brian and Melia Patria. 2008. “Because the Bible Tells Me So?”. ABC News.

China won’t budge that easily

China has already faced trade sanctions for its human rights abuses for years, in particular there are bans on arms sales by the European Union that are still in place more than twenty years after the Tiananmen Square massacre that precipitated them. [1] These haven’t helped a bit. [2] Why would a relatively small move like Google stopping its censorship work?

Moreover: true reform in China has to come from within. When it’s forced from the outside, it will not be accepted. If Google stops cooperating with the government, reform-minded Chinese officials will have a harder time, because they will seem to be losing face in the eyes of more hardline officials. [3]

[1] See debate on EU arms sales to china

[2] James Dorn, ‘Improving Human Rights in China’, February 8, 1999. URL: http://www.freetrade.org/node/169

[3] Shaun Rein, ‘Opposing View: Google’s Big Mistake’, March 28, 2010. URL: http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2010-03-29-editorial29_ST1_N.htm

Freedom of speech is important, but must be curtailed when people are threatened. Extremists are a very real threat because their messages and actions galvanize people to take violent, disruptive actions against the state and its citizens. ISPs have a right, and even a responsibility to block extremist websites if it is written into the contract when a user purchases the service. When people opt into an ISP they accept the parameters of the service, so their freedom is not being limited by the blocking of extremist content as they have already accepted that extremist websites are not a part of the access package they bought.

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
A sporting event in the heat of a desert summer will not be a pleasant experience for the fans

One of the most important parts of the game is the fans. They are the ones who watch the sport, they are the ones to which football owes its popularity. Not only are they the ones who pay for the sport they are also a vital part of any competition. Without the choreographies made by the supporters and the impressive cheering, football becomes nothing more than a silent, mediocre sport. As a result, we must take into consideration how well these hundreds of thousands of supporters from all over the world who will come to Qatar feel during the World Cup.

Let us not forget, that they will spend most of the time outside the stadia; on the streets, in the gruelling heat, or they will be forced indoors. Unfortunately, for many of them this experience will be overshadowed by the constant heat-caused discomfort when engaging in the kind of socialising and watching matches at outdoor screens that usually creates the atmosphere of the cup. It is even more worrying when you take into consideration the fact that supporters of all ages and health conditions come here, some of them will be exposing themselves to heat related risks. Heatstroke can potentially cause death. Taking this into consideration, UEFA’s 54 member associations have already backed a switch, while Europe's leading clubs have said they are "open" to the possibility of a winter World Cup in Qatar.(1)

The 2022 World Cup in Qatar must switch to winter, according to FIFA’s own medical chief. Michel D'Hooghe, the chairman of the FIFA’s medical committee, will advise that the risks posed to supporters by extreme heat are too great. "I am sure the Qataris have the technical skill to organise a tournament where teams could play and train in a stable, acceptable temperature, but it's about the fans. They will need to travel from venue to venue and I think it's not a good idea for them to do that in temperatures of 47C or more."(2)

(1) Richard Conway “Qatar faces no threat to its right to host 2022 World Cup” , BBC, 3 October 2013 http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/24375821

(2) “2022 World Cup in Qatar must be played in winter”, BBC, 16 September 2013 http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/24114961

In its bid for hosting the World Cup, the Qatar chairman Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani Al-Thani said the stadiums would have "zero carbon cooling equipment utilising solar technology to ensure the temperature is no higher than 27 degrees Celsius, ensuring optimum playing conditions and a comfortable environment for fans. This same environmentally friendly, carbon-neutral technology will ensure training sites, fan fest and fan zones are also cool and comfortable."(1)

This type of technology will ensure that the fans are protected from the intense summer heat at all times. It is true that they won’t spend most of the time in stadiums, but where they will spend most of the time are fan zones. In those areas bars, restaurants and shops will be installed, thus creating an environment where fans will be encouraged to spend large quantities of time.

It would be only reasonable to assume that in that $200 billion that Qatar will invest a significant part of it will be apportioned to assuring the well-being of the supporters. Even if the Qataris won’t be able to build artificial cooling-spots for everyone, the fans themselves will want to search for spots which will protect them from the sun, like hotels, pools or cafes.

As a result, due to the capacities of the organizers and the inner disposition of humans to shelter themselves from harmful environments, there are no reasons to worry about the health of the fans.

(1)” Qatar 2022 World Cup Bid Reveals New Stadium Plans and Cooling Technologies”, World Football Insider, April 28, 2010 http://www.worldfootballinsider.com/Story.aspx?id=33206

There is already a problem with talented teenagers from Africa and other poorer countries being recruited by rich European clubs to train at their academies. This takes them far away from family and friends and ties them into long contracts they don’t understand – some have called it a form of slavery. And if they get injured or turn out to be not quite good enough, then they can be thrown out without proper support. At the same time, poorer footballing countries are deprived of many of their most promising players, without even getting the transfer money paid when adult players move to a new club overseas. The FIFA plan is a step towards preventing such exploitation, the fact it doesn’t solve the problem completely does not prevent it from being a good first step.

Rich athletes from wealthier countries will always have access to the latest, highest quality performance enhancers. On the other side, athletes from poorer countries which do not have the same medical and scientific advances will not be able to keep up. They will always be at a disadvantage regardless of whether performance enhancing drugs are legal or not.

If we were to look at the two possible outcomes we would see that allowing both males and females to compete against each other would actively decrease discrimination. This happens as, in this situation, we perceive the two sexes as being equal, able to compete against each other, both beginning the race from the same starting line, whereas the alternative would be to draw an imaginary barrier between the two sexes claiming that they are so far apart that competition between them would be futile. Those women who come on top on several occasions, such as Danica Patrick who has won NASCAR competitions (1) will show that all those stereotypes are wrong and that they should have been long forgotten. Of course there will be a lot of women who won’t be able to win anything, but the entire spotlight and all the media coverage will be on the ones who will, so they’ll be getting the lion’s share of media attention. As a result, successful stories of women defeating men in their leagues will come as a megaphone for promoting gender equality in society.

(1) Esteban “9 Female Athletes Who Competed Against Men”, Total Pros Sports, October 28, 2011 http://www.totalprosports.com/2011/10/28/9-female-athletes-who-competed-against-men/

Simple analogy: If a person were to kill himself for the sake of entertaining the crowd, this act would still be considered illegal by the government and efforts to hinder and discourage it would be created.

An appropriate example is the one of dangers of alcohol and tobacco, which were not known until after they had become normalized in society. Once the dangers were known, the public were so used to it, that they wouldn’t condone a ban by the State. If alcohol were introduced tomorrow it would be banned, as shown by the attitude towards narcotics and steroid use has shown. Governments have tried to reduce sales by having high levels of tax on tobacco and alcohol anyway. Moreover many states are restricting choice in tobacco and alcohol by introducing limited bans, such as on smoking in public places. The proposition cannot use the fact that tobacco and alcohol are legal as a defense of the use of drugs. This should be seen as an equally detrimental act and thus illegal.

Sport is dangerous. Today’s athletes decide to endanger their lives by participating in sports all the time. They decide to participate in sports with the informed decision that they might get hurt as it is part of the sport. Performance enhancing drugs are no different.

In the USA every year there are nearly 300,000 sports-related traumatic brain injuries (TBIs). Athletes involved in sports such as football, hockey and boxing are at significant risk of TBI due to the high level of contact inherent in these sports. Head injuries are also extremely common in sports such as cycling, baseball, basketball and skateboarding. Many head injuries acquired, playing these sports, lead to permanent brain damage or worse. Yet we do not impose a law to ban athletes from participating in those sports. We trust their assessment of risk (1).

All about Traumatic Brain Injuries: http://www.allabouttbi.com/sports-related-traumatic-brain-injury/ , accessed 05/15/2011

The media can and often is used as a tool for public policy. Examples of this include the broadcasting of public information campaigns against drink-driving or smoking or else bans on certain advertising such as smoking advertisements or sponsorship appearing on TV.[1] What’s more the government has a huge influence in what it deems to be worthwhile news or television programs and documentaries. This is because of the existence of state controlled media organisations, like the BBC, and on a more subtle level, with the imposition on restrictions as to what can and cannot be published or broadcast.

The media coverage inequality between women and men’s sport is a different issue to that made out by the opposition. Floods in Queensland Australia are more relevant to Australians than Europeans because they are more likely to have been affected by them. Women’s sports, however, are potentially as relevant to people’s lives as men’s sports. The increased participation in women’s sport indicates that media coverage is likely to be relevant to more and more people. Even if this was not the case women’s sport should still get air time; with the internet and digital TV it is wrong to suggest that more coverage of women’s sport will come at the expense of men’s sports as there is enough airspace.

[1] ‘Law ends UK tobacco sponsorship’, BBC News, 31 July 2005.

The government can to a degree cover for any potential drop in funding from private sector sources. Focus can remain on developing grass-roots and sports at schools in order to incentivise new generations of athletes, so the harms mentioned by the opposition will by and large not occur. In time, popularity of women’s sport will increase such that it will once again attract large lucrative TV rights deals and large investments from sponsors.

It must also be mentioned that the opposition to an extent present a false dichotomy with their argument. Increased coverage of women’s sport need not take valuable air time away from more popular men’s sport in the way the opposition claims. Matches can be scheduled so that they do not clash with each other, and more TV channels can be created (such as the BBC’s red button service). Additionally, air-time is often packed trivial stories and programs other than popular men’s sporting events. Examples from American TV include reports ‘on supremely unhealthy hamburgers on sale at a minor league baseball parks or basketball star Shaquille O’Neal’s contest with a 93-year-old woman’ [1]. Such programs could easily and painlessly be replaced with women’s sporting news or live broadcasting.

[1] Deggans, Eric: “Continued apathy by sports media toward women’s sport a bigger problem than first meets the eye”, National Sports Journalism Centre, June 8 2010.

It is true that it is difficult to decide where to draw the line between legitimate and illegitimate performance enhancement. However we should continue to draw a line nonetheless. This line should be drawn at protecting athletes from harmful drugs and preserving the spirit of fair play and unaided competition between human beings in their peak of natural fitness.

The special diet and sport training equipment, which may seem very hard and exeptional, have been designed based on serious scientific research proved and tested to fit with long-term training of athletes. Hard practice to achieve the best performance with help of these professional methods is completely a different from taking steroids and growth hormones for immediate result.

Football has operated successfully for over 100 years without GLT. Two assistant referees were introduced in 1891, 28 years after the rules of association football were coined; a fourth official was introduced in 1991; and FIFA recently introduced two additional assistant referees in Europa League games. Football has demonstrated that it is willing and capable to adjust to the demands of wider exposure without having to resort to GLT.

Bullfighting is not about torturing for enjoyment; clean and quick kills are what is prized most by the bullfighting community. If a matador fails to deliver such a kill, and the bull suffers needlessly, then he will be jeered and shamed. This dynamic demonstrates a clear sense of decency within the bullfighting community.(8)

It is naïve to pretend that the alternative for bulls and cows is a long, happy life in the meadows and then a natural death. Rather, bulls and cows are kept and bred for their meat and eventual slaughter, a process which can be made to seem just as horrific as bullfighting if the same descriptive language is used. There is no significant moral difference between watching a bull die in a bullfight for enjoyment and having a cow killed to make meat so people can enjoy eating it. Must not it be so, according to Bentham's logic, that eating meat for enjoyment displays as much 'want of humanity' as bullfighting? Indeed, in many ways bullfighting is at least more honest: the violence is clear and there for all to see, whereas the death of the cow is hidden from the consumer of a hamburger. Bullfighting is in no way uniquely cruel or even more cruel than eating meat, and so to ban it would be unjustified.

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Moving to the winter would benefit Qatar

There a lot of advantages for you as a country if you are selected to organize a World Cup, a European Cup or any kind of major sport event. They range from fame and international recognition to money and influence in the administrative bodies. Therefore, it is in Qatar’s interest that this event goes as smoothly as possible in order to prove its organizing capabilities and thus allowing them to increase its chance for hosting any kind of future sporting event. By hosting the event in summer, Qatar is exposing itself a lot of unnecessary risk – and probable bad publicity.

The most obvious is someone getting injured or even worse, dying during the World Cup. This would be extremely problematic especially if we are talking about a football player participating in the event. It would not only stain Qatar’s image because it happened during the World Cup organized there, but it would also destroy any credibility that it has as an organiser of events after so many assurances that the heat will not be a problem.

Moreover if the cup were to be held in winter, some of the billions that would be used to build such complex systems of air conditioning could be used to serve other purposes. The Qataris could invest it in better publicity, more social campaigns such as discouraging racism in sports or many other areas. In that way, not only they would receive the recognition for being the organizers of the World Cup, but they would get extra credit from the international community for being involved in the social benefits of sports for example.

In conclusion, the Qataris do have the administrative support for a change of schedule, as even Sepp Blatter, FIFA’s President has recognised “After many discussions, deliberations and critical review of the entire matter, I came to the conclusion that playing the World Cup in the heat of Qatar's summer was simply not a responsible thing to do” and they should take advantage of this situation.

(1) Owen Gibson” World Cup 2022: Sepp Blatter paves way for winter tournament in Qatar” The Guardian, 3 October 2013 http://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/oct/03/world-cup-2022-sepp-blatter-winter-qatar

It is clear that Qatar will get more recognition, fame and respect from the international community if it proves itself able to solve a range of problems which were considered to be too difficult for anyone to handle.

In the past, all the other countries that hosted the World Cup were engaged in all sorts of social campaigns designed to solve multiple problems, and the Qataris will be no exception. But if they want to set themselves apart from the others they must prove they are able to solve even more difficult problems, such as their ferocious heat. Once they manage to solve this by introducing state-of-the-yard technologies, they will differentiate themselves from previous hosts and receive more respect.

Another reason why Qataris will receive more respect is because they will open the road for organizing sporting events in places which were previously considered to be ineligible. They will be the ones who will spur the development of the technology necessary to ensure the optimal temperature for this event, a technology which could be used in the future. As a result, they won’t just be the first Arab country which organized the World Cup, but the nation which blazed a path to enable Arab countries to host major sporting events in the summer.

There is already a problem with talented teenagers from Africa and other poorer countries being recruited by rich European clubs to train at their academies. This takes them far away from family and friends and ties them into long contracts they don’t understand – some have called it a form of slavery. And if they get injured or turn out to be not quite good enough, then they can be thrown out without proper support. At the same time, poorer footballing countries are deprived of many of their most promising players, without even getting the transfer money paid when adult players move to a new club overseas. The FIFA plan is a step towards preventing such exploitation, the fact it doesn’t solve the problem completely does not prevent it from being a good first step.

Rich athletes from wealthier countries will always have access to the latest, highest quality performance enhancers. On the other side, athletes from poorer countries which do not have the same medical and scientific advances will not be able to keep up. They will always be at a disadvantage regardless of whether performance enhancing drugs are legal or not.

If we were to look at the two possible outcomes we would see that allowing both males and females to compete against each other would actively decrease discrimination. This happens as, in this situation, we perceive the two sexes as being equal, able to compete against each other, both beginning the race from the same starting line, whereas the alternative would be to draw an imaginary barrier between the two sexes claiming that they are so far apart that competition between them would be futile. Those women who come on top on several occasions, such as Danica Patrick who has won NASCAR competitions (1) will show that all those stereotypes are wrong and that they should have been long forgotten. Of course there will be a lot of women who won’t be able to win anything, but the entire spotlight and all the media coverage will be on the ones who will, so they’ll be getting the lion’s share of media attention. As a result, successful stories of women defeating men in their leagues will come as a megaphone for promoting gender equality in society.

(1) Esteban “9 Female Athletes Who Competed Against Men”, Total Pros Sports, October 28, 2011 http://www.totalprosports.com/2011/10/28/9-female-athletes-who-competed-against-men/

Simple analogy: If a person were to kill himself for the sake of entertaining the crowd, this act would still be considered illegal by the government and efforts to hinder and discourage it would be created.

An appropriate example is the one of dangers of alcohol and tobacco, which were not known until after they had become normalized in society. Once the dangers were known, the public were so used to it, that they wouldn’t condone a ban by the State. If alcohol were introduced tomorrow it would be banned, as shown by the attitude towards narcotics and steroid use has shown. Governments have tried to reduce sales by having high levels of tax on tobacco and alcohol anyway. Moreover many states are restricting choice in tobacco and alcohol by introducing limited bans, such as on smoking in public places. The proposition cannot use the fact that tobacco and alcohol are legal as a defense of the use of drugs. This should be seen as an equally detrimental act and thus illegal.

Sport is dangerous. Today’s athletes decide to endanger their lives by participating in sports all the time. They decide to participate in sports with the informed decision that they might get hurt as it is part of the sport. Performance enhancing drugs are no different.

In the USA every year there are nearly 300,000 sports-related traumatic brain injuries (TBIs). Athletes involved in sports such as football, hockey and boxing are at significant risk of TBI due to the high level of contact inherent in these sports. Head injuries are also extremely common in sports such as cycling, baseball, basketball and skateboarding. Many head injuries acquired, playing these sports, lead to permanent brain damage or worse. Yet we do not impose a law to ban athletes from participating in those sports. We trust their assessment of risk (1).

All about Traumatic Brain Injuries: http://www.allabouttbi.com/sports-related-traumatic-brain-injury/ , accessed 05/15/2011

The media can and often is used as a tool for public policy. Examples of this include the broadcasting of public information campaigns against drink-driving or smoking or else bans on certain advertising such as smoking advertisements or sponsorship appearing on TV.[1] What’s more the government has a huge influence in what it deems to be worthwhile news or television programs and documentaries. This is because of the existence of state controlled media organisations, like the BBC, and on a more subtle level, with the imposition on restrictions as to what can and cannot be published or broadcast.

The media coverage inequality between women and men’s sport is a different issue to that made out by the opposition. Floods in Queensland Australia are more relevant to Australians than Europeans because they are more likely to have been affected by them. Women’s sports, however, are potentially as relevant to people’s lives as men’s sports. The increased participation in women’s sport indicates that media coverage is likely to be relevant to more and more people. Even if this was not the case women’s sport should still get air time; with the internet and digital TV it is wrong to suggest that more coverage of women’s sport will come at the expense of men’s sports as there is enough airspace.

[1] ‘Law ends UK tobacco sponsorship’, BBC News, 31 July 2005.

The government can to a degree cover for any potential drop in funding from private sector sources. Focus can remain on developing grass-roots and sports at schools in order to incentivise new generations of athletes, so the harms mentioned by the opposition will by and large not occur. In time, popularity of women’s sport will increase such that it will once again attract large lucrative TV rights deals and large investments from sponsors.

It must also be mentioned that the opposition to an extent present a false dichotomy with their argument. Increased coverage of women’s sport need not take valuable air time away from more popular men’s sport in the way the opposition claims. Matches can be scheduled so that they do not clash with each other, and more TV channels can be created (such as the BBC’s red button service). Additionally, air-time is often packed trivial stories and programs other than popular men’s sporting events. Examples from American TV include reports ‘on supremely unhealthy hamburgers on sale at a minor league baseball parks or basketball star Shaquille O’Neal’s contest with a 93-year-old woman’ [1]. Such programs could easily and painlessly be replaced with women’s sporting news or live broadcasting.

[1] Deggans, Eric: “Continued apathy by sports media toward women’s sport a bigger problem than first meets the eye”, National Sports Journalism Centre, June 8 2010.

It is true that it is difficult to decide where to draw the line between legitimate and illegitimate performance enhancement. However we should continue to draw a line nonetheless. This line should be drawn at protecting athletes from harmful drugs and preserving the spirit of fair play and unaided competition between human beings in their peak of natural fitness.

The special diet and sport training equipment, which may seem very hard and exeptional, have been designed based on serious scientific research proved and tested to fit with long-term training of athletes. Hard practice to achieve the best performance with help of these professional methods is completely a different from taking steroids and growth hormones for immediate result.

Football has operated successfully for over 100 years without GLT. Two assistant referees were introduced in 1891, 28 years after the rules of association football were coined; a fourth official was introduced in 1991; and FIFA recently introduced two additional assistant referees in Europa League games. Football has demonstrated that it is willing and capable to adjust to the demands of wider exposure without having to resort to GLT.

Bullfighting is not about torturing for enjoyment; clean and quick kills are what is prized most by the bullfighting community. If a matador fails to deliver such a kill, and the bull suffers needlessly, then he will be jeered and shamed. This dynamic demonstrates a clear sense of decency within the bullfighting community.(8)

It is naïve to pretend that the alternative for bulls and cows is a long, happy life in the meadows and then a natural death. Rather, bulls and cows are kept and bred for their meat and eventual slaughter, a process which can be made to seem just as horrific as bullfighting if the same descriptive language is used. There is no significant moral difference between watching a bull die in a bullfight for enjoyment and having a cow killed to make meat so people can enjoy eating it. Must not it be so, according to Bentham's logic, that eating meat for enjoyment displays as much 'want of humanity' as bullfighting? Indeed, in many ways bullfighting is at least more honest: the violence is clear and there for all to see, whereas the death of the cow is hidden from the consumer of a hamburger. Bullfighting is in no way uniquely cruel or even more cruel than eating meat, and so to ban it would be unjustified.

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Heat will damage player's health

In order to fully understand the implications of this motion, one must see what participating in the FIFA World Cup means to a football player.

First of all, it means an intense and sustained physical effort for a significant amount of time. Do not forget that the Cup itself lasts for a couple of weeks, and there are plenty of weeks of training before it in order to get the players in the best shape possible. This means they are exposed to a lot of physical stress and have to play or train no matter of the weather conditions or temperature.

Secondly, with temperatures ranging from 35C to 40C during the summer it would be torture to force the players to train and play in those conditions. Former France, Fulham, Manchester United and Everton striker Louis Saha told BBC Sport he thought it was impossible for players to handle the Middle Eastern country's extremely high summer temperatures. (1) "I was in Qatar recently and it was 48C," he said. "Believe me, it is impossible to have a proper game down there." It is not only the players who get hurt, but also the game itself, as you cannot expect the same show from fatigued, light-headed and exhausted players.

Most of all, FIFA’s top priority should always be the protection of player’s health, as, at the end of the day, despite money, show or spectators, no one should risk their life or be obliged to work in unsafe conditions. Studies show the immense risks of heat-related illnesses and their potentially deadly outcome.(2) Being aware of these issues, FIFA’s vice-president Jim Boyce, from Northern Ireland, is prepared to back a decision in principle to move the World Cup to the winter.(1)

(1) Richard Conway “Qatar faces no threat to its right to host 2022 World Cup” , BBC, 3 October 2013 http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/24375821

(2) Erik Brady “Heat-related illness still deadly problem for athletes”, USA Today, 8/15/2011 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/2011-08-15-heat-stroke-still-causing-death-in-athletes_n.htm

Qatar’s successful bid to host the World Cup marked a historic moment for the country and brought huge responsibilities to the organizing committee. Qatar will be the first Arab nation to host this event, this meaning that they are under a lot of pressure to prove to the world that they have the necessary skills and capabilities to do this job. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that they will not let anything derail this event, let alone something as easily to control as temperature. It promised revolutionary air-cooling technology to counter the summer heat in its bid; this has been reiterated in a statement that they are prepared to host the tournament at anytime.(1)

Moreover, the small country’s officials guaranteed that the system, which will harness the power of the sun's rays to provide a cool environment for players and fans by converting solar energy into electricity, will be able to reduce temperatures from 45 to 25 degrees Celsius. As a result, there should be no worries regarding this aspect, as the Qataris won’t risk anything to stain the image of this event in which they will invest about $200 billion(2).

Having analyzed the preparations which have been planned for this event, Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore is adamant the 2022 World Cup should go ahead in Qatar in the summer.(3)

(1) Richard Conway “Qatar faces no threat to its right to host 2022 World Cup” , BBC, 3 October 2013 http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/24375821

(2) Nick Schwartz ” Qatar will spend $200 billion on the 2022 World Cup” , USA Today, July 9, 2011 http://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/07/qatar-will-spend-200-billion-on-the-2022-world-cup/

(3)” Qatar World Cup: Richard Scudamore wants summer event” , BBC, 15 August 2013 http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/23719835

There is already a problem with talented teenagers from Africa and other poorer countries being recruited by rich European clubs to train at their academies. This takes them far away from family and friends and ties them into long contracts they don’t understand – some have called it a form of slavery. And if they get injured or turn out to be not quite good enough, then they can be thrown out without proper support. At the same time, poorer footballing countries are deprived of many of their most promising players, without even getting the transfer money paid when adult players move to a new club overseas. The FIFA plan is a step towards preventing such exploitation, the fact it doesn’t solve the problem completely does not prevent it from being a good first step.

Rich athletes from wealthier countries will always have access to the latest, highest quality performance enhancers. On the other side, athletes from poorer countries which do not have the same medical and scientific advances will not be able to keep up. They will always be at a disadvantage regardless of whether performance enhancing drugs are legal or not.

If we were to look at the two possible outcomes we would see that allowing both males and females to compete against each other would actively decrease discrimination. This happens as, in this situation, we perceive the two sexes as being equal, able to compete against each other, both beginning the race from the same starting line, whereas the alternative would be to draw an imaginary barrier between the two sexes claiming that they are so far apart that competition between them would be futile. Those women who come on top on several occasions, such as Danica Patrick who has won NASCAR competitions (1) will show that all those stereotypes are wrong and that they should have been long forgotten. Of course there will be a lot of women who won’t be able to win anything, but the entire spotlight and all the media coverage will be on the ones who will, so they’ll be getting the lion’s share of media attention. As a result, successful stories of women defeating men in their leagues will come as a megaphone for promoting gender equality in society.

(1) Esteban “9 Female Athletes Who Competed Against Men”, Total Pros Sports, October 28, 2011 http://www.totalprosports.com/2011/10/28/9-female-athletes-who-competed-against-men/

Simple analogy: If a person were to kill himself for the sake of entertaining the crowd, this act would still be considered illegal by the government and efforts to hinder and discourage it would be created.

An appropriate example is the one of dangers of alcohol and tobacco, which were not known until after they had become normalized in society. Once the dangers were known, the public were so used to it, that they wouldn’t condone a ban by the State. If alcohol were introduced tomorrow it would be banned, as shown by the attitude towards narcotics and steroid use has shown. Governments have tried to reduce sales by having high levels of tax on tobacco and alcohol anyway. Moreover many states are restricting choice in tobacco and alcohol by introducing limited bans, such as on smoking in public places. The proposition cannot use the fact that tobacco and alcohol are legal as a defense of the use of drugs. This should be seen as an equally detrimental act and thus illegal.

Sport is dangerous. Today’s athletes decide to endanger their lives by participating in sports all the time. They decide to participate in sports with the informed decision that they might get hurt as it is part of the sport. Performance enhancing drugs are no different.

In the USA every year there are nearly 300,000 sports-related traumatic brain injuries (TBIs). Athletes involved in sports such as football, hockey and boxing are at significant risk of TBI due to the high level of contact inherent in these sports. Head injuries are also extremely common in sports such as cycling, baseball, basketball and skateboarding. Many head injuries acquired, playing these sports, lead to permanent brain damage or worse. Yet we do not impose a law to ban athletes from participating in those sports. We trust their assessment of risk (1).

All about Traumatic Brain Injuries: http://www.allabouttbi.com/sports-related-traumatic-brain-injury/ , accessed 05/15/2011

The media can and often is used as a tool for public policy. Examples of this include the broadcasting of public information campaigns against drink-driving or smoking or else bans on certain advertising such as smoking advertisements or sponsorship appearing on TV.[1] What’s more the government has a huge influence in what it deems to be worthwhile news or television programs and documentaries. This is because of the existence of state controlled media organisations, like the BBC, and on a more subtle level, with the imposition on restrictions as to what can and cannot be published or broadcast.

The media coverage inequality between women and men’s sport is a different issue to that made out by the opposition. Floods in Queensland Australia are more relevant to Australians than Europeans because they are more likely to have been affected by them. Women’s sports, however, are potentially as relevant to people’s lives as men’s sports. The increased participation in women’s sport indicates that media coverage is likely to be relevant to more and more people. Even if this was not the case women’s sport should still get air time; with the internet and digital TV it is wrong to suggest that more coverage of women’s sport will come at the expense of men’s sports as there is enough airspace.

[1] ‘Law ends UK tobacco sponsorship’, BBC News, 31 July 2005.

The government can to a degree cover for any potential drop in funding from private sector sources. Focus can remain on developing grass-roots and sports at schools in order to incentivise new generations of athletes, so the harms mentioned by the opposition will by and large not occur. In time, popularity of women’s sport will increase such that it will once again attract large lucrative TV rights deals and large investments from sponsors.

It must also be mentioned that the opposition to an extent present a false dichotomy with their argument. Increased coverage of women’s sport need not take valuable air time away from more popular men’s sport in the way the opposition claims. Matches can be scheduled so that they do not clash with each other, and more TV channels can be created (such as the BBC’s red button service). Additionally, air-time is often packed trivial stories and programs other than popular men’s sporting events. Examples from American TV include reports ‘on supremely unhealthy hamburgers on sale at a minor league baseball parks or basketball star Shaquille O’Neal’s contest with a 93-year-old woman’ [1]. Such programs could easily and painlessly be replaced with women’s sporting news or live broadcasting.

[1] Deggans, Eric: “Continued apathy by sports media toward women’s sport a bigger problem than first meets the eye”, National Sports Journalism Centre, June 8 2010.

It is true that it is difficult to decide where to draw the line between legitimate and illegitimate performance enhancement. However we should continue to draw a line nonetheless. This line should be drawn at protecting athletes from harmful drugs and preserving the spirit of fair play and unaided competition between human beings in their peak of natural fitness.

The special diet and sport training equipment, which may seem very hard and exeptional, have been designed based on serious scientific research proved and tested to fit with long-term training of athletes. Hard practice to achieve the best performance with help of these professional methods is completely a different from taking steroids and growth hormones for immediate result.

Football has operated successfully for over 100 years without GLT. Two assistant referees were introduced in 1891, 28 years after the rules of association football were coined; a fourth official was introduced in 1991; and FIFA recently introduced two additional assistant referees in Europa League games. Football has demonstrated that it is willing and capable to adjust to the demands of wider exposure without having to resort to GLT.

Bullfighting is not about torturing for enjoyment; clean and quick kills are what is prized most by the bullfighting community. If a matador fails to deliver such a kill, and the bull suffers needlessly, then he will be jeered and shamed. This dynamic demonstrates a clear sense of decency within the bullfighting community.(8)

It is naïve to pretend that the alternative for bulls and cows is a long, happy life in the meadows and then a natural death. Rather, bulls and cows are kept and bred for their meat and eventual slaughter, a process which can be made to seem just as horrific as bullfighting if the same descriptive language is used. There is no significant moral difference between watching a bull die in a bullfight for enjoyment and having a cow killed to make meat so people can enjoy eating it. Must not it be so, according to Bentham's logic, that eating meat for enjoyment displays as much 'want of humanity' as bullfighting? Indeed, in many ways bullfighting is at least more honest: the violence is clear and there for all to see, whereas the death of the cow is hidden from the consumer of a hamburger. Bullfighting is in no way uniquely cruel or even more cruel than eating meat, and so to ban it would be unjustified.

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
A winter cup would harm media revenue

At the beginning of each year, every media company, especially the big ones, try and make a plan to see which of the sporting events, they should cover in order to maximize their ratings. As the broadcasting rights of these types of events cost hundreds of millions of dollars, this is a very sensitive issue.

One of the most important factors when deciding which events to and not to broadcast is the date in which it takes place. Every media company wants to create a system in which it has continuity of sporting events in their grid, by televising competitions throughout the year, and not just in some periods. By doing this, the channel becomes known for its sports coverage resulting in increased ratings.

This proposal of changing the World Cup date is at least problematic, as the televising-rights have already been sold. American TV network Fox, which paid £265m for rights to 2018 and 2022(2) World Cup for North America, “is understood to be concerned over the commercial implications of any move that would see any clash with the NFL season, let alone the Super Bowl”.(1) James Murdoch, the son of 21st Century Fox Inc. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, and other network executives told FIFA that “moving the competition by several months from its usual June start to the winter would clash with National Football League games”.(3)

Unfortunately for FIFA, this could create a precedent for future events, as there will always be doubt whether the date of the events will be changed or not after the televising rights are sold. This lack of trust will translate into a lower price which media companies are willing to pay for broadcasting FIFA’s competitions. Because we are talking about huge amounts, it will have a harmful impact upon FIFA’s competitions beyond 2022.

Let us not forget that FIFA is involved in campaigns against racism, discrimination and many others which help raise awareness and ameliorate a wide variety of problems. Therefore, a drop in funds will translate not only into worse football competitions, but also damage these campaigns which would likely be the first place for the cuts axe to fall.

(1) Richard Conway “Qatar faces no threat to its right to host 2022 World Cup” , BBC, 3 October 2013 http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/24375821

(2) Robin Scott-Elliot “World Cup Q&A: How did the 2014 tournament in Qatar end up as a winter of discontent?”, Independent, 03 October 2013 http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/world-cup-qa-how-did-the-2014-tournament-in-qatar-end-up-as-a-winter-of-discontent-8857479.html

(3) Tariq Panja “Fox Said to Oppose FIFA Plan to Shift 2022 Soccer World Cup”, Bloomberg, Sep 17 2013 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-16/fox-said-to-oppose-fifa-plan-to-reschedule-2022-soccer-world-cup.html

It is true that the change of dates might constitute a problem for media companies, but there are a few points due to which this change wouldn’t be unfair towards them.

First of all, it was clear from the beginning that the dates could change and that the final decision belonged to the FIFA Organising Committee. As a result, this risk should’ve been taken into consideration when deciding the offer.

Secondly, ratings are ratings. Media companies’ main concern is attracting more and more people to watch their program so that they can ask for higher prices for companies who want to advertise on their channel. As a result, it doesn’t matter that the World Cup takes place in winter or summer, as the broadcasters that are showing the world cup will have the same increase in ratings. They will still be drawing viewers from other channels so as far as they are concerned, the effects should be similar.

Finally, even if these highly unlikely harmful effects do exist, the normal response would be to renegotiate the broadcasting-rights with all the media channels and reorganize the auction. In that way, all the broadcasters could take into consideration the price they would pay for a winter World Cup and so they won’t be exposed to these downsides caused by the date change.

There is already a problem with talented teenagers from Africa and other poorer countries being recruited by rich European clubs to train at their academies. This takes them far away from family and friends and ties them into long contracts they don’t understand – some have called it a form of slavery. And if they get injured or turn out to be not quite good enough, then they can be thrown out without proper support. At the same time, poorer footballing countries are deprived of many of their most promising players, without even getting the transfer money paid when adult players move to a new club overseas. The FIFA plan is a step towards preventing such exploitation, the fact it doesn’t solve the problem completely does not prevent it from being a good first step.

Rich athletes from wealthier countries will always have access to the latest, highest quality performance enhancers. On the other side, athletes from poorer countries which do not have the same medical and scientific advances will not be able to keep up. They will always be at a disadvantage regardless of whether performance enhancing drugs are legal or not.

If we were to look at the two possible outcomes we would see that allowing both males and females to compete against each other would actively decrease discrimination. This happens as, in this situation, we perceive the two sexes as being equal, able to compete against each other, both beginning the race from the same starting line, whereas the alternative would be to draw an imaginary barrier between the two sexes claiming that they are so far apart that competition between them would be futile. Those women who come on top on several occasions, such as Danica Patrick who has won NASCAR competitions (1) will show that all those stereotypes are wrong and that they should have been long forgotten. Of course there will be a lot of women who won’t be able to win anything, but the entire spotlight and all the media coverage will be on the ones who will, so they’ll be getting the lion’s share of media attention. As a result, successful stories of women defeating men in their leagues will come as a megaphone for promoting gender equality in society.

(1) Esteban “9 Female Athletes Who Competed Against Men”, Total Pros Sports, October 28, 2011 http://www.totalprosports.com/2011/10/28/9-female-athletes-who-competed-against-men/

Simple analogy: If a person were to kill himself for the sake of entertaining the crowd, this act would still be considered illegal by the government and efforts to hinder and discourage it would be created.

An appropriate example is the one of dangers of alcohol and tobacco, which were not known until after they had become normalized in society. Once the dangers were known, the public were so used to it, that they wouldn’t condone a ban by the State. If alcohol were introduced tomorrow it would be banned, as shown by the attitude towards narcotics and steroid use has shown. Governments have tried to reduce sales by having high levels of tax on tobacco and alcohol anyway. Moreover many states are restricting choice in tobacco and alcohol by introducing limited bans, such as on smoking in public places. The proposition cannot use the fact that tobacco and alcohol are legal as a defense of the use of drugs. This should be seen as an equally detrimental act and thus illegal.

Sport is dangerous. Today’s athletes decide to endanger their lives by participating in sports all the time. They decide to participate in sports with the informed decision that they might get hurt as it is part of the sport. Performance enhancing drugs are no different.

In the USA every year there are nearly 300,000 sports-related traumatic brain injuries (TBIs). Athletes involved in sports such as football, hockey and boxing are at significant risk of TBI due to the high level of contact inherent in these sports. Head injuries are also extremely common in sports such as cycling, baseball, basketball and skateboarding. Many head injuries acquired, playing these sports, lead to permanent brain damage or worse. Yet we do not impose a law to ban athletes from participating in those sports. We trust their assessment of risk (1).

All about Traumatic Brain Injuries: http://www.allabouttbi.com/sports-related-traumatic-brain-injury/ , accessed 05/15/2011

The media can and often is used as a tool for public policy. Examples of this include the broadcasting of public information campaigns against drink-driving or smoking or else bans on certain advertising such as smoking advertisements or sponsorship appearing on TV.[1] What’s more the government has a huge influence in what it deems to be worthwhile news or television programs and documentaries. This is because of the existence of state controlled media organisations, like the BBC, and on a more subtle level, with the imposition on restrictions as to what can and cannot be published or broadcast.

The media coverage inequality between women and men’s sport is a different issue to that made out by the opposition. Floods in Queensland Australia are more relevant to Australians than Europeans because they are more likely to have been affected by them. Women’s sports, however, are potentially as relevant to people’s lives as men’s sports. The increased participation in women’s sport indicates that media coverage is likely to be relevant to more and more people. Even if this was not the case women’s sport should still get air time; with the internet and digital TV it is wrong to suggest that more coverage of women’s sport will come at the expense of men’s sports as there is enough airspace.

[1] ‘Law ends UK tobacco sponsorship’, BBC News, 31 July 2005.

The government can to a degree cover for any potential drop in funding from private sector sources. Focus can remain on developing grass-roots and sports at schools in order to incentivise new generations of athletes, so the harms mentioned by the opposition will by and large not occur. In time, popularity of women’s sport will increase such that it will once again attract large lucrative TV rights deals and large investments from sponsors.

It must also be mentioned that the opposition to an extent present a false dichotomy with their argument. Increased coverage of women’s sport need not take valuable air time away from more popular men’s sport in the way the opposition claims. Matches can be scheduled so that they do not clash with each other, and more TV channels can be created (such as the BBC’s red button service). Additionally, air-time is often packed trivial stories and programs other than popular men’s sporting events. Examples from American TV include reports ‘on supremely unhealthy hamburgers on sale at a minor league baseball parks or basketball star Shaquille O’Neal’s contest with a 93-year-old woman’ [1]. Such programs could easily and painlessly be replaced with women’s sporting news or live broadcasting.

[1] Deggans, Eric: “Continued apathy by sports media toward women’s sport a bigger problem than first meets the eye”, National Sports Journalism Centre, June 8 2010.

It is true that it is difficult to decide where to draw the line between legitimate and illegitimate performance enhancement. However we should continue to draw a line nonetheless. This line should be drawn at protecting athletes from harmful drugs and preserving the spirit of fair play and unaided competition between human beings in their peak of natural fitness.

The special diet and sport training equipment, which may seem very hard and exeptional, have been designed based on serious scientific research proved and tested to fit with long-term training of athletes. Hard practice to achieve the best performance with help of these professional methods is completely a different from taking steroids and growth hormones for immediate result.

Football has operated successfully for over 100 years without GLT. Two assistant referees were introduced in 1891, 28 years after the rules of association football were coined; a fourth official was introduced in 1991; and FIFA recently introduced two additional assistant referees in Europa League games. Football has demonstrated that it is willing and capable to adjust to the demands of wider exposure without having to resort to GLT.

Bullfighting is not about torturing for enjoyment; clean and quick kills are what is prized most by the bullfighting community. If a matador fails to deliver such a kill, and the bull suffers needlessly, then he will be jeered and shamed. This dynamic demonstrates a clear sense of decency within the bullfighting community.(8)

It is naïve to pretend that the alternative for bulls and cows is a long, happy life in the meadows and then a natural death. Rather, bulls and cows are kept and bred for their meat and eventual slaughter, a process which can be made to seem just as horrific as bullfighting if the same descriptive language is used. There is no significant moral difference between watching a bull die in a bullfight for enjoyment and having a cow killed to make meat so people can enjoy eating it. Must not it be so, according to Bentham's logic, that eating meat for enjoyment displays as much 'want of humanity' as bullfighting? Indeed, in many ways bullfighting is at least more honest: the violence is clear and there for all to see, whereas the death of the cow is hidden from the consumer of a hamburger. Bullfighting is in no way uniquely cruel or even more cruel than eating meat, and so to ban it would be unjustified.

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim