A law is a law for a reason

Now, I know I won’t be making any friends in the college crowd, but I’m going to have to say that lowering the legal drinking age would be a bad, no, horrible idea.   And there are many logical and scientific arguments to back this up.

First and foremost, it is scientifically proven that human brain cells continue to develop into the early to mid 20′s.  It is also proven that alcohol will halt the production of these brain cells.  If the legal drinking age were to be lowered to 18, or anything lower than it is now for that matter, the U.S. government would essentially be encouraging our teenagers to stop their development long before they are ready to.  Plus, teenagers are still at the maturity level where they are more likely to consider their own entertainment over intelligence, leading to a higher chance of alcohol poisoning and alcohol related injuries.

And it’s not just college students that would be affected by this law change.  The biggest effect would be on high school students, who currently have a much more difficult time getting their hands on alcoholic beverages than their college counterparts.  There are many people, myself included, that turned 18 at the very beginning of their senior years.  Now tell me, does high school and alcohol sound like a good mix?  Of course not.  Just like in college, the younger people would get their hands on alcohol from the older ones, and we’d have even younger people drinking illegally.  High school students are just not at the right age and maturity level to handle the responsibility of consuming alcohol.

Now, one of the biggest arguments for changing the current law is that drinking would actually decrease in people aged 18-20 because they’d be allowed to do it.  Not only is that argument absolutely ridiculous, but it’s completely based on speculation.  Well here’s my speculation.  Many people don’t consider a party worth going to if it doesn’t involve alcohol; a little bit loosens you up and it’s always interesting to see that one guy who gets totally wasted making a fool of himself (you all know what I’m talking about).  Would it really make people less likely to throw these parties if it was less dangerous to do so?  Is that really even a question?

Finally, we come to the reason the law was passed in the first place, to prevent alcohol related car accidents.  People are told from the time they’re very little that drinking and driving is a terrible idea, and yet people still do it all the time.  How could it not be a good thing to keep 18 year olds from driving drunk by making the consequences for them worse.  At that age level, these people are the most likely to make that mistake, so why not make a greater incentive to avoid driving drunk.

So lawmakers were on the right track when making the decision to make the drinking age 21, and it should most certainly stay that way.

Coming up, BEER!

First off, thanks to everyone who checked out the blog and voted.  We got 39 views yesterday, which may not sound like a lot, but as it’s only our second debate, we’re pretty happy.  So keep on checking out the debates, because we really appreciate your support.

We’ve finally decided on the schedule for the blog that we’ll follow from now on.  We’re going to make the debates biweekly, giving us the off weeks to write our arguments and perfect them, and making sure neither of us are late.  So our next debate will begin next Monday.

And what might that debate be, you might ask?  BEEEER!  Well, now that I have your attention, we’ll be debating the legal drinking age (for all you college students).

So thanks again for the support, and check back Monday for the new opener.  And in the meantime, check out our individual blogs (the links are on the right side).

Playoffs, here we come!

I’ll take that and raise one.

I don’t really have any new points, but I’ll touch on each of Aaron’s.  First off, with regards to the fairness of the top two teams, how could you say that having two teams in the running for the national championship is more fair than 8 or more.  Sure, someone’s going to complain that they didn’t make it in, it’s going to be that way no matter how many teams there are, but the cutoff has to be made somewhere.  And clearly, it’s better to give 8 out of the 119 division 1 teams a chance at taking the championship than just 2.

Now, a good college football team should play their best regardless of rankings, but I understand that rankings play a big part in the performance of a team week to week.  But how much difference would it really make if a playoff system was created.  It’s still incredibly fierce competition just to stay in the top 8 teams.  In fact, lower ranked teams would be gunning even more for the 7th and 8th spots, which as of now are relatively unimportant, so in my opinion, these games would only become fiercer.

On a side note, even if the playoffs resulted in a weaker performance in some games, is that necessarily a bad thing?  I mean, we all love watching the players giving 110% every play of the game, but is it really a good idea to be running these athletes ragged.  Most of these players are hoping to end up in the NFL, where, as much as I resent it, they’ll get payed much more than I will with my engineering degree.  But an injury, which is much more likely to occur when the teams are playing as hard as they can, can seriously set back the possibility of a career in professional sports.

I also have two comments on the bowls remaining a factor.  First, the bowls do a hell of a lot less for a school than they really ought to.  The bowl payout, which initially seems great, is greatly reduced when you consider it includes all the costs of the teams and bands travelling to the game, as well as merchandising.  Second, there’s no reason to get rid of the bowls that already exist with a playoff system.  These bowls would just be used as the playoff games themselves that lead up to the national championship.  This would even give 2 extra bowl games a chance to join in with the already elite bowls because it would require 6 games to determine the championship players.  Oh, and I’m sure no one is trying to delegitimize the Superbowl.  In fact, the Superbowl is the end of a postseason playoff series…

Lastly, there’s an easy solution to the time requirements for playoffs.  What about the month long winter break.  2 games a weekend for 3 weeks and you’ve determined your #1 and #2 for the 4th weekend.  This won’t hurt the academic performance of the players, and teams that make it into bowl games now have to stay through winter break anyways to practice for their upcoming game.

In the end, the BCS is and unnecessary and completely unfair system for determining the national champions and could easily be replaced with a better system using a little logic and planning.

Bulls*** Championship Series

Let’s get right down to it, the BCS is a terrible system for deciding the best teams in the country.  Sure, maybe statistically the BCS polling system works, but when has a sport ever been based solely on stats?  Part of what makes sports so great, particularly college, is the passion that goes into the games that cause the big upsets we all love to watch.  When you come right down to it, there really is no good reason the BCS should exist.

The biggest and best argument against the BCS is the lack of a playoff system.  Every other sport in college football has one.  Without it, the end results of the season are often unfair and very bad at determining the best team in the country.  The way the system is set up now, if you win all of your games in the season, you’re practically guaranteed a spot in the National Championship.  Granted, this is a difficult task for any team, but the problem is that most games in a season for any team are played against other teams in their conference.  That means that even if a team sweeps their schedule, it really only proves that they’re the best team in their conference.  Without playoffs, though, these teams are assumed to be one of the best in the country irregardless of the strength of their conference/schedule.  A post-season playoff would easily fix this problem, allowing the top ranked teams to play each other until the two best could be determined and be sent to the National Championship game.

Aside from the way the rankings work, there is another problem with the way the BCS is set up.  It is possible, and quite probable, that the teams that head to the BCS bowls won’t even be the top ranked teams.  Aside from the National Championship game, which is always the #1 and #2 spot, the BCS bowls get to choose which teams they want to play there.  Not only that, but certain conferences (the more popular/wealthy ones) have automatic BCS bowl bids (some even have 2).  So even if a team is ranked high, if the winner of a conference that has an automatic bid is ranked lower, they still get preference in going to a BCS bowl game.

So, in short, the Bowl Championship Series is an unfair, biased, and certainly unnecessary system that could easily be replaced.  Oh, and I’ll be giving plenty of examples in my next post.  Aaron, your move.

BCS Showdown!

Well, college football season is back again, and I for one couldn’t be happier.  Back are the days of tailgating, loud student sections, long lines for excessively priced food, and for me, showing up 3 hours early to put on a full wool uniform and stand on my feet in uncomfortable shoes for 4 straight hours (yay marching band!).  All jesting aside, though, college football season for me and many other people is the best time of the year.

But one argument has surrounded the college football scene for years; what’s the best way to determine who the best teams in the country are.  Since 1998, the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) has been the set up system for determining the rankings of the teams.  The BCS uses a compilation of several different polls, including computerized polls and human based polls, to give a final ranking system, from which the top two ranked teams will play in the national championship game.

But the BCS system is not perfect, and many people believe that it should be changed.  The controversy rages on today, and that’s what we’re here for!  I got to pick my side for this one, so I took the anti-BCS argument, and Aaron will be defending the system.  He deferred to go second, so check back tomorrow to see my opening statement.

Not Buying Into It

Oh Aaron, it saddens me so that you’ve been so successfully brainwashed.

I would first like to address your statement that a Mac “is what I want it to be.”  I don’t really see where you’re going with this argument.  You’re talking about third party apps to customize your computer, which a PC can do as well.  In fact, I would say one of the best things about a PC compared to a Mac is the freedom of choice, not just in software, but in hardware as well.  When you go to buy a Mac, you get to choose between what Apple offers you.  When you go to buy a PC, or even yet, BUILD ONE, you’ve got hundreds of options to choose from.  So whether you’re the old lady who’s only going to use the computer to check her emails and wants something cheap and simple, or the mother who wants a lot of hard drive space for all the pictures of her kids, or the hardcore gamer who wants 16 gigs of RAM and the top of the line graphics card, you can find it in a PC.

As Aaron mentioned, Macs aren’t perfect, and neither are PCs.  Yes, they do have a better chance of breaking down.  In fact, I had a hard drive burn out of my own this past year.  But in most cases, these breakdowns are covered by the warranty, and all they require is a quick trip into Best Buy or some other computer repair shop (it took them about an hour to put the new hard drive in).

Aaron also points out that most software isn’t being made for Mac’s because there hasn’t been as much of a market for them.  But why bother waiting for programs to be written for a Mac when they’re already there for the PC, and work just as well.  I have personally done a large amount of video and music editing on my fairly old HP desktop with XP and never had too much difficulty (what difficulty there was came mostly from user error).  And this market argument brings me back to my virus argument as well.  Just because there aren’t many viruses now for Macs doesn’t mean there won’t be.  Think about it, the reason there are so many viruses for PCs is because they’ve been so popular for so long.  More and more people are using Macs, so more and more viruses will be written for them.

I’ll admit Apple came up with a great marketing scheme with the “I’m a Mac” commercials, but I just don’t buy into this whole Mac fad.  In the end, PCs are still just superior computers.

…and I’m a PC

So when I took on defending Microsoft’s OS, Windows, I thought to myself, this’ll be easy.  Windows has been the dominant force in computers for decades now.  But ever since Apple’s line of “I’m a Mac” commercials have come out, Microsoft has been on the defensive, forced to advertise against what Apple was claiming.  Despite the fact that it seems Windows is on the way out, it is still by far the best operating system on the market.

First off, let’s talk about user interface.  A lot of people I talk to say the Mac interface is very user friendly and much easier to understand than a PC.  I say that’s ridiculous.  Windows has been around for a long time, and they stick with what they know works.  People are comfortable with the bar across the bottom with your open programs, the start button, it’s all very familiar and easy to use.  Every time I try and use Aaron’s computer, usually to get music from iTunes, a program I am familiar with, I end up getting frustrated and making Aaron do things for me.

Second, what about programs.  Being an engineer, a lot of the software I use (and I mean a LOT) is only available for a Windows operating system.  Sure, you can partition your hard drive just to use these on a Mac, but why would you want to bog down your computer running an intense CAD program on a computer on which it doesn’t belong (haha, sorry Hutch).  And engineering programs aren’t the only thing nice about PC’s.  Any sort of business program, such as Microsoft office, is easier and runs better on a PC.

And, what about games.  I mean, anyone who’s even mildly serious about playing computer games would instantly be attracted to a PC, there are so few games that will run on a Mac.  Aaron himself has his hard drive partitioned just so he can play games.

Now, what does the Mac have better than a PC.  For one thing, people say they’re much better for any sort of media.  But in truth a Windows machine can run a video or picture editing program just fine, and of course, tons of people use iTunes on their PC’s.  The only nice thing about Macs in this regard is that the software they start with for these things is better, but anyone who’s serious about media will end up buying a more indepth editing software anyways.

Viruses.  That’s a big argument for Mac owners.  “Macs don’t get viruses like PC’s do all the time.”  Alright, so maybe that’s true now, but don’t get all excited about that.  The more people you convert to the Mac side, the more viruses are going to be developed that effect your precious virus free computers.  The only reason there are so many viruses Windows has to deal with is because it’s been the only real major operating system for years.  Viruses run on supply and demand just like anything else made; what’s the point in creating a virus for a group of computers that isn’t widely used?  But don’t take it from me, according to Wikipedia (yes I know it’s not considered a viable source, but honestly, who doesn’t use it?) “Microsoft software is targeted by virus writers due to their desktop dominance…”  So don’t get used to no viruses, all you Mac users, the more of you there are, the more viruses there will be.

Finally, there’s the price.  You can get a relatively similar product from a PC compared to a Mac, for a much lower price.  Why is this?  Because Apple essentially has a monopoly on the Mac OS.  If you want to run that operating system, you have to go to the Apple store, or a few Best Buy’s, and buy an Apple computer.  Whereas with a Windows machine, you can choose from tons of different companies (Dell, HP, Compaq, and Gateway, just to name a few).  Competition is what drives advancement and brings prices down.  It’s Capitalism, it’s the American way! (not that I’m insinuating PC’s are more American…).  Due to this competition, the price of the PC is more reasonable, and these computer companies are always looking to get one step ahead of the others by putting increasingly better hardware into the computers.

All in all, there’s many good reasons why Windows is still the major operating system.  In my opinion, this new Mac craze is simply a result of an aggresive (and somewhat low) marketing campaign on the part of Apple.  Windows will likely remain the more impressive operating system for years to come.

Mac Vs. PC!

Welcome, all, to Bone of Contention!  It has taken us a little while to come up with a good topic for our first debate, but we’ve finally settled on probably the biggest technology fight of our era, Mac’s vs. PC’s.  We wanted to start with something that wasn’t too serious, but not too silly either.  This one’s an easy one for us to pick sides, me being an engineer and Aaron being a newly converted Mac fan due to the requirement for one in his major (E-media).  By coin flip, Aaron got to choose who got the opening statement, and he deferred to me.  So, without further ado, I just have one last thing to say:

It’s on!