Last word on Big Bronx

One curious item that Bietz pointed out is that, in random pairings, TRPC inevitably pits singletons against singletons. It's not hard to figure out that the software does the "tough" pairings first, where there's lots of people from a team, leaving the easy pairings for last (they can debate against anyone, judged by anyone). Somehow, instead of debating that random anyone, they debate the other singles. This is quite problematic at a tournament with a Round Robin where there may be a whole slew of singletons, and the last thing you want is all your presumably strongest debaters knocking each other out in the random pairings! Unfortunately, most of the fixes for the problem (most simply creating a geographic region of singletonness) are no more fair than the lack thereof, because this would exclude the necessary randomness. There's nothing wrong with singletons hitting each other if it's truly random; then it's luck of the draw,

Interesting.

Joe V suggests simply doing a new hand-pairing of the singletons with the pairs on the schematic above the problem pairs. You would have to decide to do this in advance, of course, because you don't want to spend too much time on it while people are waiting to debate Round One. I say, select a universe of problematic singletons. When your first pairings are released, check if more than 50% are debating each other. Then create a paradigm of how many should hit if it's random. Then readjust that many.... Boy, that sounds bogus. (Joe merely suggested the above hand-pairing stuff; I came up with the bogus part).

Anyhow, I'll be thinking about this. Solutions welcome, if you've got one, short of moving to cards.

I never pointed out that we housed the Montwegians Friday night. We've housed the team before, and once again we just split them among our assembled selves. I only had a carful of Hen Hudders to begin with, plus some cornshucker HoraceMan, the superhero without any superpowers, picked up. On the way north Friday night HoraceMan and the Cornshucker carefully established who would be teaching labs at what camps this summer. On the way back Saturday we listened to Bat Out of Hell at top volume, complete with Menick singalong. Now you tell me: which would you rather listen to?

And I continue to work on my various websites, trying to find order, but doing so by haphazardly tossing things up into the air and seeing what happens. Not exactly the best approach to achieving organizational efficiency, I would say. Last night we had our first tutti meeting in a while, talking about various biz plus the new topic. I'm proud to say we brainstormed the topic for 45 minutes and never once discussed judicial activism. Talk about deep background (which reminds me, I still need to post my Rostrum article here). Next week we'll get down to the actual topic. Although realistically, there won't be too much action with it on the varsity level, given the demise of NFA and our exclusion from Bump. Which is why I'm probably going to launch the Newburg Faux Academy tournament on 11/12, which will run exactly like Little Lex with a novice and an Open division. The Open will give people going to Princeton and Bump somewhere to practice their resolutional chops. Although when HoraceMan at one point last night pointed out some bizarre techicality that would provide so-called good debate fodder, I almost threw him to the wolves. What are the odds most debaters WON'T discuss judicial activism over the next couple of months? Which is too bad, considering that it's one of the most interesting subjects around these days. Viva Clarence! Way to go, Nino! I'm just wild about Harriet! Et cetera, et cetera. I'm going to side with my mother in the future. She decides whether or not she likes women judges and politicians and the like by how ugly they are, essentially claiming that the ugly ones should go back where they came from. Now THAT's a kritik.

Speaking of mothers, I met O'C's on Saturday. Really. Apparently she's homeless and found herself roaming Jerome Avenue when she saw a bunch of teenagers in suits, and on a hunch, followed them back to the High School. I was just returning from my car when I saw O'C trying to hustle her out the back door, saying that, in fact, it was actually the assistant principal. Nope. You can't fool me, fella. I saw the resemblance immediately. I commiserated with her on the fact that her scion was unemployed and living in a stolen penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue and spending all his time giving out Soddy and Cruzie awards. She punched me in the solar plexus and told me to go back where I came from. So I did.

A splendid time was had by all, and the next time I talk about Big Bronx, it will be about a year from now. I promise.