Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Either/or <> both; modern love; bowling far from alone

Jimi Mo asks the following regarding CatNats LD in a comment: “Question, are you saying that the negative strategy saying that athletics and debate [I assume he means fine arts] should be viewed as equal is illegitimate, or that its something that people ought be prepared for, or both.” The answer is, of course, both. Now, reasonably speaking, one could theoretically claim that the affirmation of the topic is that a particular aspect of education needs to be valued higher than another, and that the opposite position, and therefore the negation, is that no particular aspect of education should be valued higher than another. And if you and I were discussing this at the dinner table, this positioning of the topic might make sense. In fact, in the real world, it is pretty much inarguable that secondary education ought to balance (and support) athletics and the arts. But debate is not the real world, and it is pretty obvious that the intention of the resolution is for debaters to argue the relative merits of athletics v. fine arts, and not for debaters to be arguing a balanced education versus an imbalanced education. But, alas, that doesn’t mean that that is what will happen in the rounds. If negatives can successfully pull off this particular reading of the resolution, unless they start singing the songs from The South Park Movie in the middle of the round, it’s hard to imagine how they could lose. I’m reminded of an old regular NFL topic on economics versus protecting the environment in developing nations. As often as not, the negatives ran not their side of the dichotomy, but a recommendation of balanced development. To which there could be no successful affirmative reply other yeah, “Yeah, duh!” Unfortunately I don’t think this sort of problem is fixable by some rewording of a resolution. When you want to present two choices, you have to frame it that one side is preferable to the other, and I can’t imagine wording that excludes the prospect that neither side is preferable (or both sides are preferable). Debaters who come up with this reading of the resolution inevitably think of themselves as clever little devils, by the way. So, affirmatives need to be prepared: the CFL is filled with clever little devils.

Meanwhile, I noticed on Facebook this morning that it is my wife’s birthday. I plan to write “Happy Birthday” on her wall some time today, if I can find a moment in my otherwise busy schedule. I love this Web 2.0 world that we are living in. It takes all the work out of human interaction.

And speaking of human interaction, I love this: A friend of mine at the Day Job is out bowling last Saturday night. (What kind of friends do you have there, you might ask, if they’re all out bowling last Saturday night. I refuse to answer that question.) She’s bowling away—a strike here, a spare there, a little bag of peanuts in between. Then her husband nudges her to look over there. And in the neighboring alley—bowling away, a strike here, a spare there, a little bag of peanuts in between—is a high school student wearing a “What Would Menick Do” tee shirt. The otherwise unbridgeable gap between Day and Night is closed, and my friend at work will now pay any amount of money for a WWMD tee. I gather these are now the hottest items on eBay, other than Menick beanie babies and Menick action figures. I guess I should ask O’C, he being the biggest collectible person I know (i.e., a person who collects, not a person who is collected by others). If anyone is in the market for a Boba Menick Big Fig, it’s him.

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