Maybe Monticello is really Brigadoon...

Arthur L. Johnson is this coming weekend. I’ve got a small group of Sailors lined up. Given that ALJ shows up everywhere else, I feel it sort of behooves us all to show up there. The alternative—washing my socks—comes in a poor second. They’ve got decent numbers of LDers and Pffffters (ALJ, not my socks), but couldn’t get any policy traction for some reason. Oh, well. I may not have clean socks, but I’ll be able to add Clark, NJ, to the list of places I have been in for more than eleven minutes. The big question is, will Monticello get there? They’ve been snowed, iced and generally inclemented out of every tournament so far this year. I’m beginning to wonder if there really is a Monticello. Is it time to take T&T and co off the invitation list? Is this somehow related to Favre and the Jets? We’ll know this weekend.

Meanwhile, Bigle X is kicking around issues like community rankings and strikes. O’C wants 119 strikes, which strikes me as a few over the line, whereas I was pushing for -9, per school, whether they come or not. I imagine we’ll sort it out by the end of the day; I’ve asked CP to give me access to the data so I can see just how many people we’re actually talking about. Community rankings are no big deal, since you just toss them into a spreadsheet and take ‘em as they come, but strikes always open the possibility of screwing up. If a judge is added late, if a team is added late, if the moon is in Pisces, things won’t necessary work right, although lately I have to admit that, since I’ve been keeping hard copies of who wanted to strike whom, and when they’ve come to tab to complain that they didn’t get their strikes I’m able to show them that, in fact, they were the only team in the tournament NOT to strike O’C, well, maybe this part of TRPC isn’t working as badly as I once thought. Big Jake was the high point of people complaining that they didn’t get the strikes they hadn’t made, by the way. Curiously enough, even there, O’C was the number one strike, and he wasn’t even on the list of judges. For that matter, he wasn’t even on the list of non-judges. People had to go really out of their way, but, well, debate is serious business in these here parts.

I’ve got all sorts of interesting stuff lined up for the Sailors’ meeting this week, but the weather seems to be conspiring against us. As for next week, we’ve scheduled a Jan-Feb-topic demo round between Stealth and the Hardware Engineer, both of whom will be getting the kinks out this weekend at ALJ. Word is that the early betting out in Vegas is both heavy and fairly equally split, even though there are never any winners or losers in these demos. But that doesn’t stop the whales, as they say out in the desert. If you’ve got the money, you’ll bet on anything. Any side bets on whether the HE will pull a reverse theory argument on the off-case pre-standard spike? For that matter, any side bets on whether there is such a thing as a reverse theory argument or an off-case pre-standard spike? It’s going to be one exciting evening, I can tell you that. Standing Room Only. Woo hoo!