FIGHT CLUB!

Class goes into two sections.

Each section elects a section leader.

The section leader will divide his or her team into four sections. Each of the four sections will tackle a proposition. Each subsection will nominate a debater for their subsection.

The format for fight club will be the following:
-2 minute opening statement (affirmative)
-2 minute rebuttal (negative)
-2 minute opening statement (negative)
-2 minute rebuttal (affirmative)

The propositions:

-Terrorism is a result of our intervensions in other country's affairs.

-The current Wall Street crisis is a result of Congressional mismanagement.

-A woman has the right to do anything she wants with her body.

-Illegal immigrant labor is required to fuel the economy.

Sample Articles

http://timesonline.typepad.com/uselections/2008/09/palin-linked-el.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_Committee

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/science/earth/17ice.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin

http://www.jstor.org.lib-e2.lib.ttu.edu/stable/3509490?&Search=yes&term=travels&term=twain&term=abroad&term=mark&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dmark%2Btwain%2Btravels%2Babroad%26x%3D0%26y%3D0%26wc%3Don&item=1&ttl=553&returnArticleService=showArticle

Sample 4

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a very controversial novel written by Mark Twain and is an accurate representation of American culture. It is mainly a record of American culture in the South because the North is not at all a prominent subject in the novel. In my opinion, it portrays three main Southern cultures: industry and its effects on agriculture, the importance of one’s social status, and how the southern way of life was represented in the 19th century. All of these three main points are clearly shown in the novel and add a vivid effect of the South in the 1800’s. This whole novel is a reflection of the South in the mid 19th century.

Sample 3

Ray Johnson is a narrator of almost exactly half of the Last Orders. He has thirty-six chapters versus thirty-six chapters of all the other characters. As he is the most descriptive narrator, the whole novel could have been told by him alone, with other passages serving only as additions to it. We get all our facts about the journey from him, for he is the only narrator of it. He starts and ends the story with the present time narration. All the passages about the journey are called by a name of the place where the friends are at in the moment. Ray's first narration, for example, is called by the name of the town, where they live and where their journey begins, "Bermondsey". The last chapter - by the name of their final destination, "Margate". This shows clear structure of the novel, its beginning and the end, even though the way the plot is told is not chronological.

Sample 2

The short story "The Merchant of Heaven" by Margaret Laurence is about Brother Amory Lemon who comes to Africa from the Mission of the Angel of Philadelphia. The church he is representing is based on the message of Apostle John to the Church in Philadelphia, as written in Revelation 3:7-13. In view of this fact, it is not surprising that we get numerous references to the Apocalypse of John in the story. These allusions not only assist in portraying the character of the evangelist, but also help us see the colossal gap between Christianity as preached by Brother Lemon and the real life of ordinary Africans.

Sample 1

The way Ernest Hemingway introduces the main characters is quite remarkable. First, he does not give us any physical description of them. By this, the writer creates an effect of a distance between the couple and us. This also makes us pay extra attention to their dialogue, since it is the only information we get about them. And even their conversation sounds very mysterious, because they never name the subject of it. We know neither what they look like, nor what exactly they are thinking. Second, in the beginning, Hemingway calls them simply "the American and the girl" (p. 155). As you can see, originally, we have more information about the man, for, at least, we know where he is from, but about the girl we know nothing. As we go along, however, we learn the girl's name, Jig, while the man remains just an American, a nameless and faceless American. This symbolizes our lack of knowledge and understanding of the real character of the man. We know nothing about him, and this does not let us trust the man, since we never trust those we know nothing about. Through contrasting the characters in "Hills Like White Elephants", Ernest Hemingway develops the meaning of the story, showing his objection towards abortion.

Video

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/8d8a8a5f53

Links for paraphrasing

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7605935.stm

http://businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20080908171808.aspx

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SCIENTISTS are trying to stop the most powerful experiment ever – saying the black holes it will create could destroy the world.

Dubbed by some the Doomsday test, it will be carried out next week in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located 300ft underground near the French-Swiss border.

The machine is 17 miles long and cost £4.4billion to create.

When its switch is pulled on September 10, this atom-smasher will become a virtual time machine, revealing what happened when the universe came into existence 14 billion years ago.

New particles of matter are expected to be discovered, new dimensions found beyond the four known, as scientists re-create conditions in the first BILLIONTHS of a second after the Big Bang.

Experts even predict that millions of tiny black holes will be produced — baby brothers of the monsters gobbling up dust and stars at the heart of the galaxies.

That is why boffins are now trying to stop the project with a last-ditch challenge in the courts.

They fear the LHC experimenters are tinkering with the unknown and putting mankind — and our whole planet — at risk.

The group responsible for the experiment, the European Nuclear Research Centre (CERN), says that these mini black holes will vanish as quickly as they are created.

But the anti-CERN brigade accuse the scientists of playing God, warning that no one can guarantee that the black holes will not survive, rapidly growing in size to suck the Earth out of existence in an instant.

But CERN, which includes several UK scientists, say their work is vital to unlock the secrets of matter that forms everything known in the universe.

In the experiment, atomic particles will be fired in opposite directions along the 17-mile long underground ring — the length of the Circle Line on the London Underground.

They will travel so fast that they make 11,245 trips around the tunnel every SECOND.

From the collisions, boffins expect to discover a fundamental bit of the atom, called the Higgs boson, that is expected to exist but which has never been seen.

Professor Otto Rossler, from the Eberhard Karls University of Tubingen in Germany, is one of the scientists mounting the legal challenge at the European Court of Human Rights against 20 countries which are funding the project.

He said: “It is quite plausible that these little black holes will survive and will grow and eat the planet from the inside out.”

A CERN spokesman said: “It will not be producing anything that does not already happen routinely in nature.”

The atom smasher ... the 17-mile-long machine that some fear will destroy our planet