I just posted some commentary on
tabroomadventures.blogspot.com about how we handled the Blue Ribbon judges at
Newark. Curiously, no one seems to have said a word about this publicly, I mean
about the idea of BR judges in the first place. As I say in that other post, which is
otherwise very much inside-baseball, I haven’t thought about it much myself. I
guess in a way it’s not unlike the pre-MJP days, when tab put who tab thought
were the best judges into the toughest rounds, so it’s not as revolutionary as
one might think. It just happens to do the same thing with total transparency.
I would imagine things are heating up for Bigle X. I have
yet to muddy CP’s waters (although I do hope at some point they let us have
some rooms) with my own (what he would call) mucking about in the system. JV
and I will be doing VLD and O’C and Bro John are doing NLD in the same middle
school venue. Mostly what I’ve been thinking about is that, after dropping the
Sailors off at the high school Friday night to be housed, the only one I might
see again before dinner at Rein’s Sunday night is my lone, lorn LD creetur’.
You can’t wait around for your teams to get housed if you're a couple of miles
away. Those of you who never did any of this before the cellphone era have no
idea of what we used to go through. You’re not missing a thing.
In terms of heating up, the Gem of Harlem has gone from 0 to
60 (mixed metaphor noted and ignored) with a snap of the fingers. TBAs will be
executed tomorrow night, judges will be allocated Saturday morning, and there
you are. There’s still a lot of logistical issues to be discussed, but JV and I
can hash that out when we’re together at Lex. I did do a big clearing of the
waitlist Sunday and told people that if they weren’t cleared, it was probably
because of their history of shenanigans or because I didn’t believe they were
real teams, given that they had entered themselves or passed the job off to
their mothers. I expected this to draw some heated replies, but the only
response I got to my message, which also said that I’d be releasing more slots
in a couple of days, was a query whether I’d be releasing more slots in a
couple of days. [Sigh.]
Anyhow, if you’re nuts-and-boltish, pop on over to the other
blog and check out that post. And if you have opinions on Blue Ribboners, let
me know. I’m curious about what people think.
1 comment:
The Blue Ribbon Judges are an interesting choice; I think it COULD successfully counteract a lot of the push towards a weird, "rhetorically inverted" LD where not only do the arguments come fast and complicated (which, to some extent, is okay with me; I'm fine with a debate being as complex as a discussion between two undergraduates in Ethics or International Relations or Economics class), but at the same time include arguments and speed which are only intelligible to people who regularly invest an inordinate amount of time keeping up with the newest fads in LD debate. I personally think a lot of the "new school/progressive" arguments don't make sense to anyone and there's just a cabal of people who all pretend to agree they make sense, and call anyone they oppose them stupid, and because of who tends to end up in final rounds, those judges tend to be in final rounds.
Blue Ribbon Judges could be a way to make sure the coaches hailing from ancient times, highly informed college professors, and other individuals we know will render a good decision find their way to outrounds panels and bubble rounds. Of course, this is all dependent upon those Blue Ribbon Judges being those types of individuals.
The Negative argument, as I see it, is that Blue Ribbon Judges might end up being individuals who are very much invested in LD and willing to entertain peculiar LD-isms. If anything I'd like to see the Blue Ribbons not go out primarily to debate coaches but to esteemed and fair-minded members of the community known to be informed about philosophy and the topic, but those individuals are hard to find. I myself am a bit of a hardliner on this issue, as I don't even really like kids using this "Value-Value Criterion" stuff any more and think they should just make arguments like philosophers do.
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