Money and debates

Yet another time I proved myself that money rules the world. I read an email concerning a movie about Qatar debate team. When I looked at the trailer I noticed that so many of best debaters around the world have helped them to practice and learn.

I wonder how good could Latvians become if we had such coaches?

Latvian government – a joke or a failure?

I’m watching “Kas notiek Latvija?” and I see that even after several months into deep crisis and several months after first discussions with international organizations who deliver financial help to Latvia our politicians just care about their butts and don’t want to see that severe changes and improvements are needed!

It’s a shame that these people are the only ones that we can get to lead our country.. On the other hand, it makes me want to become politically active!

One idea about tax cuts

It’s sunny and cool outside, but I am helplessly trying to write at least something for the macro report. I was thinking about how life sucks when you have work to do and already was near a suicide. Suddenly, I’ve found a nice concept about political economy that changed my mind about a possible suicide and understood that life is OK and today I’ve learnt something nice and new.

Whatever about my life and bloody report, here is the concept about tax cuts that one could use somewhere in debates. It is called “Starving the beast” and more info about it could be found here . The main idea is that instead of cutting the government spending and then cutting the taxes, it is more effective to cut the taxes and then the government spending will adjust automatically, since government income will reduce. But read more about it to get a better understanding.

Cheers, Nikita aka Hitman

Tournament in Kyiv

Hello,

I have found a massive BATNA for those who will not partipate in the Peaktime. The option is to go to the “Kyiv Spring” debate tounament (May 1-3) and have some fun there. The level is not very high, meaning that you can binge drink all the weekend and still break.   The reg fees are 20€ & 10€ for debaters and judges respectively, n-1 applies. Some bullet-pointed advantages:

• CA is William Jones. The euro and world champion. I wonder how can they get such good ca’s all the time.
• Kyiv is a wonderful city, really worth visiting and revisiting. Relatively cheap as well.
• It is a train trip – expect nothing but an awesome journey. Plus Odessa is not that far away should anybody want a detour
• You get grilled meat with onions for breakfast. And like it.
• Taxi drivers refuse to take you to the hotel because the road to the hotel is flooded.

Registration ends on April 10. Let’s go?

EJ

SSER Debate Society has an official band now

There were two major decisions we made during our trip to Ventspils:

1. The Debate Society already has its own official flat, official drink (Jager … mmm) and official whatever other stuff… Now the time has come to recognise the official band of the Debate Society – The Prodigy. The decision was made during the way back from Ventspils and all five of us voted “for”, so the decision shouldn’t be doubted or argued anyhow   Later we will post some photos of our “Mad Road Rave Parties” and you all will be impressed by the power of this music (people in Marupe already had)

2. Considering the fact that the official band of the Debate Society is The Prodigy, we decided that the party on the next SSE Riga IV will be a hardcore rave party

Now we suggest you go to youtube, search “Prodigy”, and experience the beautiful harmony of rave.

 

Nikita, Martins V., Roberts, Liva, Dmitrijs

The new place

As one might have noticed we are failing miserably to hold debate sessions in our place on Zala street. There is a reason for that; however, the walls of the appartment are so thin that even a regular debate provokes neigbours to start complaining..

As a result we have found a new place. We took our experience with Zala street into account, so this time we got a place in office building It is located on Pulkveza Brieza 6.

As the school signed the agreement today, we hope that in few days we’ll be able to move from Zala to P.Brieza street. It seems that the first session will be held there next Monday.

We dominated Banku Augstskola IV

Last weekend four of our teams (one consisting of Martins V. & Eriks R. actually won the competition) participated in BA School of Business and Finance tournament. Also Roberts B. & Nikita P. aka The Hitman qualified for Grand Finals.

The competition was lot of fun, the motions were interesting, people were friendly and our debaters won Apple Nano players

Academic Earth

It’s time for the link of the month. Chech out this invaluable resource – Academic Earth is an online database of lectures from the best universities of the world.

I personally have found Academic Earth a great resource for self-development. It also gives one a good idea of what a good university lecture should look like. The universities represented in this project include MIT, Berkeley, and Yale.

In my opinion, the courses by Benjamin Polak on Game theory and Walter Lewin on the basics of physics great. The teaching quality in these courses in very high.

Have fun with it!

Changes in the pharmaceutical industry

Hi everyone!

I hope that you enjoyed today’s debate on scrapping patents in the pharmaceutical industry. I think it will be interesting to take a look at the article that inspired this debate.

In short, GlaxoSmithKline has made mindblowing changes in the way this conglomarate operates. The most stunning proposal is the creation of so-called ‘patent pool’ where researchers from other companies can access information that previously was protected by strict intellectual property laws.

Read the article. What do you think about this approach? Will it revolutionize the pharma industry?

Good luck,

M.

European University Debating Rankings

Some of you probably know that a guy called Jonathan Leader Maynard (JLM) has been composing IONA universities debating rankings for a few years. This year he’s doing it for all European tournaments, therefore giving more weight to non-IONA teams results. See where SSE Riga is placed by clicking the link below…