Ryan wants us to name names, to let the world at large know who the debate miscreants are. But I think that is mildly illegal and/or immoral, at the very least. My first amendment rights do not extend to pointing the finger at, say, O’C, and saying that I have positive evidence that he’s a poopy-head. He could easily take umbrage at the accusation. And it wouldn’t solve anything. (He is not one of my problem people, of course; I’m simply using him as an example of the inherent right of protection against slander. The fact that I’m even including this parenthetical statement shows how far I feel I need to go to protect people, even poopy-heads like O’C.) The problem people, for the most part, aren’t evil, they’re just inept. Their ineptitude need not be made public, nor do I think that making it public would reduce it. Nor, for that matter, do I think there’s any other real solution for it (although my ad hoc solution mentioned yesterday has the virtue of swift satisfaction in the tab room). People need to get their acts together in life in so many ways; debate is just one of them. I’m happy to advise the world at large on how to be better, but I can’t get the world at large to change. The best I can hope for is some impact on a small group of students; beyond them, I’m pretty helpless.
Last night the Three Bean Salads podcasted away, this time on our predictions for the future, at least for part of the show. (It will go up shortly.) We also (all right, I also) ranted a bit on MJP, while they apologized for not mentioning every great debater ever the last time we recorded. I thought they should have apologized for putting me to sleep while mentioning what felt like every great debater ever the last time we recorded. We have differing beliefs about debate history, obviously. I do agree that history is useful, but I’m not so interested in it myself that I care to listen to a few hours of it, or what seems like a few hours of it. This may be related to my inability to remember what I had for breakfast this morning, but that’s another subject entirely.
What we didn’t talk about in all our tech predictions for the future was the MaxiPad, which strikes me as a non-starter. I mean, if we already had the MaxiPad, and Jobs announced a version of it that would fit in your pocket, I’d be falling off my chair with techlust. But the idea of taking the Touch and making a version that won’t fit in my pocket? Well, I can see occasional uses for it, but not enough to warrant the expense yet. I’ll get the $100 version in a couple of years, but until then, I’ve got a computer in the office, some computers at home, plus a Touch, and why I need to augment them is beyond me. Do I believe the product will fail? Not necessarily. Do I think it will be a game-changer? Not really. It might find a niche, it might not, but for once I’m not staring into my wallet wondering how I’m going to afford it. I just don’t care. Sorry about that.
1 comment:
I think I'm being slightly mischaracterized here (or, *horrors*, I explained myself poorly). I'm not asserting straight out that naming names is the right thing to do, but I am trying to figure out what standard it is you're going for.
Clearly this libel thing is more about sensibility than law, because truth is an absolute defense to libel, and if you had any doubt as to whether maybe their info was in on time and you just lost it in tab or something, you presumably wouldn't rant about these people so often.
But if you think they're just helplessly inept, and you want to protect them, why on earth would you propose something like tournament blackballing? That sounds way worse than calling someone out. Yes, you might get into a public argument (cf Jonathan Peele and the NFL), but that actually seems markedly more fair.
If naming names is just a generally inappropriate tactic, why did CP name names of freakin' high school kids re: the Harvard Extemp Final brouhaha. Or maybe you disapprove of him doing that, but didn't want to name names :P.
And it does seem like if this sort of shenanigans is causing you to doubt MJP and CP to doubt tabbing at all, then there's a public interest in making it stop. Obviously dropping a team's own prefs and fining are the normal first steps, but if they aren't working then there's a real public cost to this sort of thing.
Heck, maybe I'm on the list--we've certainly been known to have a lot of last minute changes. Now I generally justify that by an intentional optimism about kids with marginal grades/parents/constitutions that does not always bear out, but if I found out I was endangering the circuit's ability to make use of optimal tab methods or staff, then I'd perhaps rethink that calculus.
Post a Comment