In which we rant against the weather, the resolutions, O'C, CP, and the $ircuit. Damn that groundhog!

Tuesday is meeting snow night, as usual. [Sigh.] So we’ve postponed to tomorrow, but the Hardware Engineer can’t make the meeting, so there goes the highly touted demo round. I guess I’ll have to talk about the new resolutions.

And what do I think of them? Well, curiously enough, I wrote a brief on vigilantes for a certain organization, so at least I already have my ducks in the proverbial row (if I can find it; all I’ve located so far is my notes, and heaven forbid that said certain organization release the resources along with the resolution). The thing is, it’s not much of a topic for us quantitatively, given that it’s only at our CFL qualifier (3 debaters at most), the NFL qualifier (roughly ditto) and the NY State Tournament (2 at this point, 3 if SuperSquirrel can convince the Panivore that, somehow, a horrible experience equates with a desirable experience), and most of those debaters overlap. The Left Be-Hind Pffffter topic seems like a good subject area, but we’re even less likely to do that, unless I can rustle up some CFL qualifer folk looking to spend a perfectly good Memorial Day weekend in gorgeous Albany. So my flapping my gums on these resolutions won’t be in aid of much except general edification. Still, I sort of like vigilantes because they raise the question of extra-legality, which raises the question of legality per se, and there’s both positive and negative historical examples. Of course, everyone will argue either Derrida or conditionality, so the question of vigilantism may never arise in the rounds, but one can dream. (By the way, I was reading Publishers Weekly today and saw an ad for an upcoming book entitled The Devil Reads Derrida. Order me a copy, stat!).

The fate of The Northeast Championships is in O’C’s hand, as we have assigned him the job of publicizing the event. The invite is finished, the low prices have been set, PJ is working on finding us a starting time, but O’C is so busy watching the Blu-Ray version of Howard the Duck that he may forget completely to let anyone know the details of the event. Oh, well. As least he enjoyed my Tale of True Life Debate Adventure (and pointed out that the link over there on the right was dead; I fixed it, thank you very much). Maybe he got lost again after listening to it. Bloop, bloop, eh, Mr. Cruz?

Now we need CP to fix up the ModNov site (notice how everyone else is to blame for everything that is wrong with the world?). A waiting world, uh, waits. I did sent out the invite to the final MHL, at least, so it’s not as if I’m sitting around doing nothing. And I got irritated that the NDCA seems real worried about the prices of tournaments because they can’t seem to get their eyes off the TOC prize. Jeesh. I mean, we run the practically free MHL and promote inexpensive local tournament after tournament for novices and open divisions with no bids, and we support them in great numbers, but, oh, right, we’re the northeast, and that is just sooooo not $ircuit. Feh! Stop worry about winning ponies and start concentrating on enriching the education of high school students. 16 LDers will do the former this year, whereas thousands are potentially benefactors of the latter. Getting priorities straight and saving money will, I assure you, go hand in hand.