See you in court, and/or, see you in Philadelphia

[Notes from the outside world: A sure sign that you’re in trouble is when PowerPoint is your management’s tech lingua franca.]

[More notes from the outside world: I guess my chances at buying the Illinois senate seat aren’t so good anymore. Damn. I would have been a hell of a solon.]

Last night the assembled Sailors and I brainstormed Jan-Feb. The topic easily withstood our initial scrutiny. One does need, of course, to step away from the actual ICC, but there is still plenty of specific ICC material that applies to international courts in general. You start to sense that, in some sense, the US participating in the mainstream of world affairs seems like a good idea, but then you start to realize that without an overarching analog to federalism in international affairs you’ve got all sorts of problems (down to the most basic, as in, the source of the legislative core of international judicial actions). The more you think about it, the more approaches you can see. A topic with this many entry points will be rather cacophonous early on, but should mellow out eventually. I gather there’s plenty of Christmas institute action in the offing, so that should help sort things out, or maybe make things so confusing that everyone will be totally lost. Once we venture into policy land, as this rez does, even though it is, obviously, not policy-based, one is forced to simply know so much stuff. You can’t just talk about some imaginary court in theory; you’ve got to envision how that theoretical court would work in a real world of Iraq and Iran and Abu Ghraib and Darfur and Kosovo and Henry Kissinger and Alberto Gonzalez and—well, the list goes on. I have one word for everyone: research trip. All right, make that two words: mandatory research trip. All right, three words: absolutely mandatory research trips, plural. You might recall from yesterday’s sermon that the number one of the dozen or so Top Ten tips for debate success among the Sailors is knowing what you’re talking about. That’s going to be a tall order for Jan-Feb. But without it, rounds are going to be extremely sketchy.

In other news: As anyone who has ever tried to get traction on a new debate tournament knows, weekends are hard to come by. The calendar is chockablock with one event after the other, and most weekends have multiple events. As a general rule, calendar conflicts are complementary: if tournaments are similar, they’re separated by geography, otherwise they’re separated by nature. For instance, last weekend there was Princeton and an MHL, with some Venn diagram overlap geographically, but little or no overlap spiritually. Glenbrooks, Villiger and Little Lex (and probably many others) are all on the same weekend before Thanksgiving, with very small and insignificant Venn overlaps. Harvard and Berkeley are the same weekend, and while spiritually they may be similar, as in big mutha college tournaments, their geography overlaps not at all. If one wishes to put an event on the calendar, or move an event around, the correct Venn intersection is required. If a high school in my area were to attempt an invitational on Bump weekend, for instance, they would be hard-pressed to get it off the ground because the similarities would be too great. There would be too much intersection (plus, I’d have to send the Sailors over in the night to break their kneecaps).

Anyhow, it appears as if there will be a Crimson/Quaker matchup come 2010. UPenn has been struggling for ages to find a weekend early in the season, inevitably coming up against Yale, Monticello and/or the Jewish holidays. UPenn’s tournament being what it is, its intersection with any of these is a kibosher. This season they went up against our newbies’ MHL, and even that was deal-breaker enough for many of us in the region. Old Johnny Venn was rolling in his grave.

In various discussions of CP with the Quakers, the possibility of going up Presidents’ Weekend was broached. What seems to have become clear early on was that Harvard is perceived not as any sort of regional tournament, so it wasn’t exactly serving the local area except insofar as, well, it is obviously in our region. But it’s big and expensive, and a local alternative would not be a bad idea. In Venn terms, the intersection of geography is pretty strong, but not murderous, and the intersection of spirit is actually quite small. UPenn, running pretty much as a fund-raiser for unfunded local lower-income high schools, with no TOC bids, will appeal to many on-face who already don’t attend Harvard due to the expense and general overwhelmingness of the thing. Big schools with large teams could split them. NJ and Penn schools would have someplace welcoming, a la Princeton. Granted, there is some risk, but I have to say that I personally was not happy being unable to send kids to UPenn this year because of my inexcusable inability to be two places at once. Next year I would only have to be one place. It may take a year or two to catch on, but my money is on the Quakers making a go of it at this new location. As for the Crimson, I don’t think it will have much affect on them at all. I mean, they already get infinity + 11 entrants at their tournament. If they get infinity -11 they’ll still be ahead.

Let the games begin.