Welcome to Ethos!

DeVore

This forum serves as somewhere that the judges can comment as they see fit and finally vote on the debate and the winning team as well as give their verdicts...
Ethos was the Roman term for debate driven by the force of your personality and reputation.

For this innaugral debate we have two journalists from the Irish papers, both with an interest in the development of the internet in Ireland. They have kindly agreed to judge the debate and throw their two cents in here occasionally!

Fergus Cassidy writes for the Tribune and also has an online column (called Ethos www.ethos.org and it was one of the spurs for the naming convention of these forums!). Involved with many groups that relate to the Irish Internet and its governance, Fergus is often spotted bagging a story at the most hardcore techy meetings as well as at the governmental level.

Karlin Lillington writes the Technology column for the Irish Times and the Guardian as well as freelancing for Wired and a list of well known journals. She too writes a blog (dont these professional journalists ever quit the day job?! ) which can be found here and satelites many of the pressure groups on the irish internet with a particular interest in e-privacy and e-voting.

The final judge is my good self, most of you already know me...

As far as smoking goes, I am pretty certain Fergus smokes and Karlin doesnt (right guys?). I myself have been a smoker for years but recently gave up and havent smoked a cigarette for over 4 weeks... (feel that raw unbridled self-righteousness!)

So those are the judges. The debate is joined and the topic is:
That the government should compromise regarding the banning of smoking from pubs.

Good luck all!

DeV.

Fergus Cassidy

Hello

It's hard to imagine a topic with more potential for bursting into flames than this, ahem, burning one. When Tom originally mentioned this way of discussing stuff, I was all for it to see how it would work out on Boards. And I like it.

So far both sides have come out strongly in their positions and I detect some welcome passion surfacing.

I'm torn myself about the general smoking issue. But I'm only looking at compromise on smoking in pubs, the core of the debate question.That's where the worlds of non-smokers and smokers have collided most.

I'm fully open to be convinced by either side.

Fergus

DeVore

I'm riveted by this debate now... I think so far both sides have hit home runs. I'm personally a recently reformed smoker so I favour the ban as its always been the pubs that have caused me to go back on them. On the other hand I'm very much in favour of live and let live. Compromise can perhaps accomodate both sides. I think the team in favour of Compromise has a tougher task to achieve but they are putting up a good fight! Those against havent given them a shred of purchase yet and made some telling points (I liked the logic behind the ICU argument).

I'm as yet unconvinced by either sides argument as both have been too high a quality to call a winner just yet... we'll see what the coming days bring...

Tom.

karlin

[Karlin jumps in better-late-than-never]

Yes, DeVore, you guessed right, but then it isn't hard to guess right if you're guessing that a Californian is a non-smoker! Not only that, I am one of the only Californians I know who is actually, really, truly allergic to cigarette smoke (as opposed to using it as an excuse to ask people to stop smoking which, strangely, I've never done...).

Anyway. I am enjoying this. There are some very well-argued and impassioned stances being made out there on the boards -- a debate works very well in a bulletin board format. I think the board arguments are better than a lot of them that appeared in the Letters pages of my august employer!

I can state that I am delighted with the ban, but found parts of its implementation rather bossy and stern, especially when compared to the California laws, so the compromise position is of interest to me. And I also like to be surprised by well-argued perspectives I would normally expect to oppose, so in that sense am very intrigued by how the anti-ban side is making its argument.

Let the battle continue!