Coachean Life

Do-It-Yourself Registration

2012-01-30T19:30:00.000-05:00

Things are a little odd at the DJ and I may get some time back for other things, i.e., the time I spend at home on DJing might go back to time spent NJing. We’ll see. If it turns out that way, it will probably only be for a short time, but I really want to take a look at some of my manuals, which are probably a bit out of date by now. As they’re intended for novices, the core is probably okay, but to say that LD has changed in the last few years is to say that the sun rose in the east this morning. I think I have some work to do.

We ran our first MHL under the new rules this weekend, to wit, having people take responsibility for their entries online right up to registration, which consisted of them saying they were all present and accounted for. No registration sheets to ignore. The first problem was that you can’t access your registration on tabroom.com on tournament day, so I had to tinker with the dates, but after that, people were able to get in fine. The usual complication of changing a name, requiring a switch to a non-participant, then a drop, then a switch to the real participant, is always a poser; I did a couple of those myself for people. I kept myself online with tabroom, meaning that at registration I could help people out a bit. But mostly people did what they were supposed to do. A few folks had some extra judges that showed up for later rounds, but there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as I knew it, which I did. One school had an extra judge they didn’t know about, but that judge was a hoverer, and we had to put up sandbags outside of tab to keep her from literally standing behind us as we paired. Jeesh. We finally figured out that the problem was not that we weren’t giving her rounds—if you breathe down our necks at any point in this millennium, we will put you in every round we can—but that she was never entered by her school. There are worse offenses when it comes to handling a registration. Anyhow, the new rules went quite well, and will become the way of the future.

What I couldn’t do anything about is the number of rooms we had. I had to set limits, and you’d think that I had sold the students into hard labor in the diamond mines or something. Rule number one: don’t complain that it’s the end of the world if you’ve never volunteered to host yourself. We need solutions, not conspiracy theorists. Jeesh.

One school didn’t get in because they registered for the tournament and a minute later dropped their entry; God knows why, but all this happened a couple of weeks ago. They thought I had done something to eliminate them, which is why I always activate the change log in tabroom, so that when somebody says you did something, you can point out the date and time and name of the person who actually did do it, which more often than not is them, and not at the time and date they claimed. (The usual offense on this is that someone claims shouldn’t be charged fees because they met the deadline. But they didn’t. Tabroom.com doesn’t lie. Much.) Honestly, though, the sad thing with this school was that it was a new program that was obviously tripping over its own feet; if I had had the room, I would have let them in. Alas, we had a lack. What can you do?

Yip Harburg, if you were wondering...

2012-01-27T19:30:00.000-05:00

I do like the rhyme of “exploring the Amazon” and “with her pajamas on.” Is there any day that watching Groucho won’t improve?

The Beacon MHL is proving problematic. The simple fact is that there is a limited amount of space, which hardly ever happens at MHLs, and people are reacting as if infinity is guaranteed. I set limits (equal in every division) and sent out a message that people needed to act fast. But there’s still more debaters than there is debating rooms. Some people act as if this is a change of policy, others just sort of moan and groan, but I have to say, I’ve gotten more reaction to this than I’ve ever gotten to my requests for people to volunteer to host an event. Just sayin’.

In any case, I’ve been trying to be fair when giving out the waitlisted slots (made available by not hitting the limit in other divisions). One to you, one to you, one to you, which is the only way that occurred to me as acceptable, because it spreads the lack of wealth. With any luck, someone else will drop a couple of entries tonight and we can accommodate more people, but I’m not counting on it.

On top of that, tomorrow is the first day where registration = get it right by 9:00, have an adult tell me it’s right, we start the tournament. This should be entertaining, but I’m adamant about it. If you’re too dumb to have read the emails about this, you’ll pay the price. I’m not your mother (as my mother used to say, which I have to admit caused a lot of confusion around the house). Clean up your own messes. What will really piss me off is if anyone drops people in the a.m., in slots that others could have picked up.

We’ll see.

They are out to get us. Unless we are they, in which case, we are out to get you.

2012-01-26T19:30:00.000-05:00

I long for the golden age when people would fall off their seats because of this: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OpenCulture/~3/tlde5RNB3Q0/michel_foucault_free_lectures.html I think that was two years ago.

Anyhow, I've enjoyed thinking about the number of topics per year immensely, because the more I think about it, the less I know. I'm trying to organize a little discussion on TVFT about it; stay tuned (if, in fact, you were tuned in the first place). The TOC has announced that it will stick to Jan-Feb this year, but I don't know if there's any deep meaning to be read in that. My sense is that, if the $ircuit had its way, there really would be only a couple of topics a year, but I hesitate to suggest that it must be bad because the $ircuit wants it. That's why I want to extend this dicussion. It's a good one. So far most of it's been in the comments here, in case you missed it.

Speaking of TVFT, we did one last night, Bietzless (although he had said he'd be showing up). We discussed NDCA, and it was rather heated. One of the issues we touched upon was openness, and I think that was the most interesting thing we talked about. No matter how you slice it (said moi), people always seem to think there's something going on behind the scenes in the smoke-filled room of the old boys network. They say it about TOC, CFL, NDCA, and NFL, and they say it about such lowly operations as the MHL and our local traveling tabroom. Some folks have been rather upfront in their idea that our region is run behind closed doors and as an exclusive club of some sort, and we're all pulling the levers to have debate go the way we want, but those same people don't have any actual evidence of it. I neither deny it nor admit to it. (You either trust me or you don't.) Since I tend to blab everything that's going on in my mind in this venue about two minutes after it occurs to me, I will cop to not being exactly behind the door in expressing my opinions and my plans and whatever. But it is the nature of things that an organization comes along, it gets established, and sooner or later new people come along and look at the organization and decide that it needs to be shaken up a bit because the leadership is out of touch or whatever. This is not news. In the world of LD, where there are more people than you can shake the proverbial stick at claiming that some thing they've just discovered is "progressive," and where there is no doubt that the activity changes regularly (or at least it has been in a state of flux ever since I've been doing it), the idea that people look at an organization and want to give it a kick in the pantaloons is pretty predictable. Of course, we always want it to be somebody else's pantaloons. However, with the exception of a few debate coaches who are a little over-competitive, and a few people who resemble the nether portions of your average pony and don't have the wit they were born with, I've always found that this is a group of people who are happy to express their opinions and fairly willing to change them. I don't think I'd still be in it, otherwise.

Anyhow, check out the TVFT podcast. It's a good one. (And I don't say that about all of them...)

The Topic Cycle Refuted: In Which Menick Caves?

2012-01-23T19:30:00.000-05:00

The problem with people like us (and if you’re reading this for any other reason than to remind yourself why you like to be pissed off at me, then you are one of us) is that we like to argue about everything, and as often as not don’t have terrifically grounded opinions, so we’re willing not only to listen to the opposition but to change our minds. I love throwing a few shots across the bow to see who salutes. Sometimes I wish to take no prisoners and go down in flames if necessary. At other times, well, we’ll see where the chips may fall. This is one of those times.

The thing is, I’m in a position of some authority when it comes to choice of resolutions. I’m the person who pushed for the Modest Novice, which has now been institutionalized in our circuit, where we start off novices with the same topic every year from Sept through Nov. The argument for this was primarily to guarantee an inherently good starter topic; additionally, over time, since upperclassmen would themselves have been trained on this topic, we would create a built-in legacy system. The chief objection at the time was that this meant multiple topics at tournaments, and somehow this would be unmanageable, but after the years we’ve been doing it, that has never been a problem. Keep in mind that the flow of LD judges to cover occasional PF rounds has become pretty regular, and on the judging end, complaints that there’s too many topics to follow just don’t come up. That would be like watching the news and complaining that it wasn’t all about Newt Gingrich. This world view has Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum and even Ron Paul. That way, you can complain about all of them.

So when I wrote about the resolutions going every two months, I won’t say that it’s a do or die for me. Honestly, I think my logic (which was not really expressed in the article) was that we have a resolution every two months, so let’s just use it, unless somebody can explain why there’s a better way. Ryan Miller has decided that I’m talking through my hat, and posted his own ideas on the subject.

Here’s the link to Ryan’s article: http://buckinghaminquirer.blogspot.com/2012/01/in-praise-of-fewer-resolutions.html

So, let’s see…

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In Praise of Fewer Resolutions
Because Jim Menick is wrong on the internet, I feel compelled to respond. Jim seems to think that we should go back to prepping 5-7 resolutions a year in LD, because prepping resolutions has value and it makes bad resolutions go by more quickly. I'll answer on the line by line and then offer a counterplan with net benefits.

Well, really it’s 4 resolutions plus Nats, which is a little less than 7 but could be construed as 5, if you go to NatNats. Anyhow, I'm always right and I never lie, so let's get over this Jim Menick is wrong idea. Jeesh!

1a: If practicing resolutional prep is a good thing, then it can better be achieved by a single tournament of parliamentary/legislative debate or extemp than a whole season of old-school LD or even modern PF, so the status quo solves.

Only true if you somehow think all debate is the same. It shouldn't be. If LD and extemp and PF and parli are interchangeable in form, then we're misconstruing LD and extemp and PF and parli.

1b: There's less of a discontinuity between prepping new arguments on a resolution and prepping a new resolution than Jim thinks. Killing one to save many/vigilantes/civil disobedience/response to domestic abuse all have deeply overlapping ground--often moreso than various cases on the same topic, which are written precisely to avoid common objections and thus need to trace out new approaches. This might even be a turn since there's a time tradeoff between adapting old arguments to new resolutions (with observations and link evidence) and understanding new philosophical approaches (e.g. virtue ethics).

Well, what's your rush? More to the point, I think the great ethical questions facing humanity may be better understood by applying them to a lot of different things. Much of a muchness in our thinking here, though, I think.

1c: Frequently changing resolutions advantage those who can perfect truly generic ground like kritiks or micropolitics. They don't experience the disadvantage of new resolutions, and those who actually prepare for the new resolutions don't have enough time to write good answers to the generics.

You might have a point here. But there's always been a substratum of debaters who will do anything they can not to debate a topic. This is probably non-unique.

1d: Frequently changing resolutions was an adaptation to a world where absent a summer camp in a university library, finding new angles on an existing resolution was very difficult (note how evidence poor LD cases were in the nineties). The internet solves this.

I'd need to see your evidence on this. My guess is that it was a direct response to the annual nature of the policy rez, and an attempt to keep LD different. And anyhow, if this were true, why did the policy people all have 5 tubs? Merely because the resolution didn't change? Wedro used to bring evidence on everything from Kant to Shinola, for that matter.

2a: Bad resolutions might go by more quickly, but if those resolutions are the chosen ones for States/TOC/NFL/CFL, they have just as much impact.

The impact of these 4 examples are radically different. A state topic is local and affects only some in that state. The impact of TOC is fairly toxic in a variety of ways, and is overwhelming in convincing people that they have to do certain things to debate at the "top" level. This presumes TOC style debate is the top. Whatever, but the influence of the event is overwhelming. The NFL influence is passive aggressive at best in that they create all the topics but not everyone believes in the organization as a standard setter. And the effect of the CFL topic is usually limited to Catholics, who on hearing the resolution for a given year, start to consider once again if they wouldn't be better off if they converted to Lutheranism. Anyhow, if all these groups just went with the NFL topics in the first place, the point is moot.

2b: Resolutional quality isn't endogenous to resolutional quantity. The wording committee only has so much time to work, and proposal quality would also go up if there were fewer proposals needed (see: policy). This turns the argument.

No. The quality of the resolutions is not in question. This is a separate issue altogether. That's why I don't want to conflate the particular Jan-Feb with this discussion. Whether NFL can do a better job of creating resolutions stands whether there's one of a hundred.

2c: More resolutions advantage large squads and those with large budgets. Small squads with poor connections to the alumni coaching network need to attend a circuit tournament before they even know what is going to be run on a resolution, and with the resolution changing every two months that means they need to attend one every month. For resolutions that are basically only run once, such squads get completely blindsided by those who can do a lot of brainstorming and scrimmages.

That seems true to me, but at the same time, what doesn't advantage the large squad over the small? Your point above about generic kritik responses sound to me like the small squad circuit debater's response to this. Anyhow, I'm not advocating running anything once; that was mere reminiscing. Two months is pretty long in debate years.

Counterplan: LD should have two resolutions a year, one released August fifteenth and the other December first. Resolutions should be drawn from a very long list which has five added to it every June by the topic committee. Advantages:

1. The list can grow very long (a hundred?), thus making current prep on the entire list infeasible for even very large teams, and lowering the edge provided by going to a summer camp which luckily picked an important topic (and the resentment from paying a lot of money to a camp which failed to do so). This also means that resolutions will tend to spend a long time on the list before being picked, allowing campaigns against those with poor or offensive wording.

I like the idea of giving people an opportunity to think about things over a long term. We essentially agreed to that on TVFT. We move too fast, and over the summer, no less. Not good.

1b. This basically sets LD up as a logistically constrained version of policy, which has all the advantages of policy debate theory, but without the semi-mandatory camp and evidence burden and requirement for a partner. As I've argued previously, affirmative parametrics will solve for negative win skew. This is analogous to off-season-practice rules for sports, but without the enforcement hassles.

Could be...

2. Gets rid of the most important driver for modest novice (that novices can't be expected to debate a new resolution on their second or third tournament) without triggering the harms of modest novice (small squads and those on the edge of the service area are burdened with prepping yet another resolution).

True enough, but actually the biggest MN driver was avoiding giving novices a random (and crappy) resolution that was not beneficial for novitiate training.

3. Debate quality improves for the Glenbrooks, Blake, Apple Valley, and Princeton just as it has for TOC vs NFL and CFL. The quality of debate has gone up tremendously since the nineties, except for those tournaments which insist on vanity resolutions and random judging. This is not random.

I see no proof of this in-case. Pure assertion. (I love saying that.)

All of that said, I am nonetheless rather intrigued by the idea of two topics, especially given the long brooding process. One of my chief objections to certain topics over the years has been that one or two words in the rez make it unacceptable or hard to debate, and time would heal that wound. In the modern world, we essentially only have 3 topics a year anyhow—Sept-Oct, Nov-Dec, and Jan-TOC. And there is privileging via camps that could be addressed. Of course, how do you do anything about this? Well, perhaps some November tournaments simply run Sept-Oct and do it de facto if not de NFLo. I don't know.

We'll probably end up discussing this on TVFT.

The Topic Cycle

2012-01-20T19:30:00.000-05:00

I’ve made my feelings known about Jan-Feb on TVFT, and to some extent here. I’m agin’ it. I measure the possibility of harm against the magnitude of the harm, and I find the math unacceptable. My job is to educate students about various ethical subjects against the backdrop of competitive debate; I am ill equipped to engage myself in handling the problems they may be encountering in their personal lives, and I certainly do not want, inadvertently or otherwise, to make any of those problems worse.

I’m less certain about how to handle it, though. We had this topic in the past and it flew right over my head, and the heads of most other forensicians. What has changed? Probably nothing, except that this time we saw the light (or dark) and that time we didn’t. So it goes. Because it got by us the first time doesn’t warrant using it the second time. As we agreed on TVFT, there is no blame for anyone here, from the committee to the community. (We distinguished this one from the hideous ill-informed Muslim center PF topic, which as a political wedge issue was beneath contempt as a subject for intelligent discussion, and worse, a direct harm to the Muslims in our community, who would have no choice but to defend a position claiming that their right of free speech ought to be abridged for no other reason than their religion. That one was dead on arrival. And the NFL should have known better.)

The solutions to handling the resolution have ranged, but one thing that has come up is the idea of not continuing to debate it past the theoretical normal end of its cycle. In other words, at the very least, let it go away on its expiration date. That is a proposal before the NDCA now for their national tournament, and one that I will put before the NYSDCA for our state event. But that raises another question, and while I have been separating that other question from the content discussion of this particular topic, I still think it’s worth thinking about. To wit, why the hell do we stop changing topics after the turn of the new year? I mean, I know the answer, but it’s a dumb one, and we should rethink this question, regardless of the content of any given topic, at the macro level.

Back when I started in this activity (during the Buchanan administration, if I remember correctly), we had a Sept-Oct topic, a Big Bronx topic, a Nov-Dec, a Jan-Feb, a Mar-Apr, a NY State Finals, a CFL Finals and an NFL Finals topic. I would regularly be prepping 6 topics, in other words, and occasionally 7 or 8. If there was something wrong with a topic, you waited a minute and there was the next one, and you moved along. All of which raises the question, was it a good thing to have this many topics? I think yes. Or at least I think it was mostly yes. The more parochial a topic would get, i.e., the smaller the group selecting it, the less likely it was really all that good, but by that standard the NFL topics, at least, were usually quite acceptable, and we had all voted on them straight up, and there you were.

If you followed the NFL exclusively, you debated probably 4 different topics over the space of a year, about two months per. You got as far as you could go in two months, and then you moved along. In policy, on the other hand, one topic lasts all year. One can qualitatively compare the nature of the two beasts by comparing the quantitative depth achievable over the different life spans. A policy topic has to be deep, and it has to have a year’s worth of analysis in it. Every day new research will bring up new stuff, and over the space of a year cases will come and go as the world changes and cases hit the public awareness and new blocks are developed, et cetera, et cetera. The same holds true in LD, but only for a couple of months. Then it starts all over again. (And keep in mind that some of the logic informing PF’s one-month span is precisely to restart the process every few weeks, to prevent the deep sea research diving and twisty-turny-theory arcs of a longer span.)

I like the change of topics. I like that students will get a new subject to dig into every couple of months. I can see the value of one topic dug into all year, but if that’s what you want to do, take up policy. The problem is, for reasons I do not know, but which I expect were predicated on the policy bias of the TOC folks at the time—which meant that here was a group of people raised on a year of a given topic who looked at LD and said, wouldn’t it be great if we just used the Jan-Feb topic, to get all the benefits of depth we know will ensue?—TOC instituted using Jan-Feb in May. Which is fine and dandy, but now, everybody does it. You can’t run a tournament in March or April and use anything but the Jan-Feb topic (aside, of course, from District tournaments and the odd CFL qualifier).

Does this make sense? Well, if we’re looking at every tournament in the universe after Jan 1 as prep for the TOC, it would, except I have a sneaking suspicion that the majority of people who do LD after Jan 1 of a given year aren’t going to TOC. Another issue is that people believe that students don’t want to write cases on a new topic after March 1, so we say okay, and let them keep going with what they have, even in novice divisions. Of course novices don’t need experience writing cases on new resolutions; however could anyone have ever believed that? (This paragraph, by the way, is dripping with sarcasm. If you didn't realize that, you need to readjust your sarcasometer.)

What I think we need to do is look at the question on its own merits. Should we switch topics ever two months? If it makes sense in November and January, why doesn’t it make sense in March? Because TOC does it? If, as my mother used to say, TOC jumps off a bridge, are you going to do it too? Because it’s work? Are we saying that our poor little students shouldn’t have to write cases? That sort of presumes that all those TOC people write a case on Jan 1 and then stop, and, uh, that’s not true.

Changing topics regularly is good educationally. Not changing topics offers no educational benefit over changing topics (aside, perhaps, of allowing students to concentrate on class work rather than debate). We should seriously reevaluate what we’re doing with late season tournaments.

A Note to the Connoisseurs of Exquisite Differentiation

2012-01-19T19:30:00.000-05:00

Ah, you aesthete, you. Your palate is so refined, I can only envy you. Whereas the average schlub on the street is lucky to know the difference between a link turn and a link sausage, you on the other hand can differentiate between a 26.2 and a 26.3 on the speaker scale using tenths of a point.

Do you extend your pinky when you are writing your ballot?

Okay, I may be wrong about this, but members of the VCA, knowing my track record of (admitted) wrongness, realize that I’m only saying that in case the Mayans were right and 2012 is the end of the world and I’m going to want to sing “Kumbaya” with people on the other side of the question as the earth falls into the sea and I won’t want this hanging over our heads in those last few moments. The thing is, I’ve seen too many studies that absolutely disprove that people could possibly rank speeches on a scale of 1 to 100. Or 1 to 50. 1 to 20 is out of reach. 1 to 10? Good luck.

Here’s the deal. The average person, given choices, is able to discriminate about 7 of them. There’s variation of course, but not much. If you give people too many choices, they balk. In marketing, either they don’t buy your product, or they default to the simplest option. Any wonder why vanilla is the top selling flavor at Baskin Robbins? Even been in a restaurant and someone looks at the menu and says, “There’s too many choices”? Ever felt that way yourself? Marketers use choice to set up a paradigm that their product offerings are diverse and full and rich, not because they expect to sell all those products. It’s the cost of doing business. But you don’t want to be overwhelming, so you provide defaults. Whole Foods has 17 kinds of tomatillos; most people just buy the basic cherry tomatoes.

Even if you don’t buy that (a phrase that, when uttered in debate, makes me want to throw a desk at the speaker), in LD we have a solid, time-honored history of inability to create a decent speaker point scale. Because we have no objective criteria on which to make the measurement, it becomes entirely subjective. This is why I like the breakdown of win the tournament / definitely break / might break / shouldn’t break / needs work. Those are fairly definitive gestalts of a performance that can be roughly agreed to. When I’m talking to PF parent judges before a tournament, I tell them to use a grading scale like they learned in school, A, B, C, D, F. Add maybe a tiny gradation, and there’s your 7. People can handle that.

But a hundred point scale? It’s hard enough to separate a 29 from a 28, but you want to tell me you can differentiate a 28.1, a 28.2, a 28.3, a 28.4, a 28.5, a 28.6, a 28.7, a 28.8 and a 29.9 as well? Not to mention 29.1, 27.9, 29.2, 27.8, etc., etc., etc.

On top of this, the norm is not to assign the same amount of points. No ties. But there can still be low point wins? My mind doesn’t boggle, it literally falls out of its resting spot and onto the floor, where the cat chases it around until it gets lost under the closet door.

Get real, people. You may like to stick out your pinky and explain in excruciating detail why you can tell the difference between a male and a female fly at 200 yards in the dark while blindfolded (you, not the fly), but I know better. Tenths of a point? You can barely handle showing up within half an hour of the posted round start time, and as often as not you have so little idea what happened in the round that you have to read the cases. And that, indeed, is a 28.8?

Jeesh.

Lexwegian Adventure

2012-01-17T19:30:00.000-05:00

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, good old TRPC throws you screwball.

This last weekend was Bigle X. Normally I do novice LD, but to tell you the truth, that’s sort of a snoozer, and I managed to get myself seconded to PF instead. I was working with Sarah Donnelly, who is not terribly familiar with TRPC. In the beginning she read and I input, and then we switched things around so that she’d get a feel for things, especially setting up break rounds.

Life was going swimmingly until round 5. We entered the results, printed up the check sheet and paired round 6, and prepared to goof off during the subsequent double flight. But then our checker handed us a mistake. And then another. And another. For all practical purposes, while the winners and losers were all correct, and the points for each side we totaled correctly, each individual’s points had been switched. For every single team. (Fortunately, since the totals and wins were accurate, the 6th round pairing was unaffected.)

Well, sez I, I guess that can happen, although I’ve never seen it before. We had printed the “other” PF ballots, not the Harvard ballot, so the names were often switched, so maybe that was it. (And I'm pretty sure I was the culprit here, not my poor apprentice.) We entered them again, carefully, correctly. We printed up another check sheet. It was no different from the first sheet. Then we just started entering and checking ourselves. If you entered results, no matter what, they didn't take.

Could the choice of ballots have affected the results? I can’t imagine how, because ballots are an output function that shouldn’t have bearing on input, but maybe that’s it. At this point CP joined the fray and we looked for the data file with round 5 results, and lo and behold, it didn’t exist. Oh joy. Oh rapture. The good news was, we could go into the contestant cards—each and every one of them—and make the corrections, and this time, they took.

I would suggest that Sarah got her baptism by fire. So did I, for that matter. Needless to say, we doublechecked the round 6 ballots thoroughly, but these were fine, and everything went back to normal in the elims.

As I say, every now and then TRPC has a surprise for you, even in a version you’ve used many times. Tim Averill, who was chivvying up the parents in the judges' lounge for us, likes to update to new versions like an Apple fanboy chasing iPhones, but I prefer to stick with one that works unless there’s some wonderful feature we’re missing and have to have. I don’t believe that tenths of a point is that feature, but that’s a subject for another day.

In other Lexington news, there were no exciting events worth reporting. One judge fell asleep in a round and was reported to us, but we knew this judge well and explained to the teams involved that they were no more likely to get a good decision if the judge were awake, and that they shouldn’t worry about it. Otherwise, everyone showed up, we made nice panels in elims especially in the bid round, and there wasn’t a blizzard, an ice storm or a plague of locusts. What more could you ask of a tournament?

By the way, translation: "I'll be right back" = He wanders off for at least 10 minutes

2012-01-11T19:30:00.000-05:00

I think I’m turning into an ogre. It used to be that when people annoyed me with idiotic nonsense, I simply ignored them. Now my instinctive reaction is to engage them. This serves no purpose. People whose ignorance expresses itself in hostility are hardly going to become enlightened and gentle upon encountering the brilliance and clarity of my ripostes. In fact, it just encourages them to develop their ignorance in that forge of their hostility, while I just get progressively more hostile myself. Not good. The solution is for me to remember to ignore things that need to be ignored, and let it go at that. I can’t fix them, so why bother? Sometimes it’s hard, though.

Yes, I am working behind the scenes on a tournament, the Gem of Harlem, and people are driving me crazy. I remain amazed at how self-insufficient people can be, and how coaches who have been attending tournaments since the Garfield administration (the President, not the cat) can be so obtuse on the subject of tournament attendance. Oh well. This is the last one of the year like that. College tournaments do tend to attract way too many people, a lot of whom seem to confuse it with a cruise on the Norwegian Princess Line. No, we don’t serve herring in bed. We get them out of bed and then we serve them.

Jeesh.

Last weekend was a small local event that went swimmingly enough. The most interesting thing was putting together a 12-team PF event. After 3 rounds 2 teams from the same school were undefeated, so we byed them in round 4, the first time in a while we’ve byed a team at the top, much less two. But they had already beaten everyone in the 2-1s, or were also from the same school. A double pull-up hardly seemed fair, as it was more than likely to result in a predictable defeat. Fairer rounds were to be found elsewhere, and that’s what we did. But then came the interesting part for tab geeks. After round 4 we had the 2 undefeateds, then 2 3-1s who had already met. One of the 3-1s could have debated an undefeated, but the same school situation literally guaranteed the other 3-1 an elim slot because there was nothing for it but double pull-ups. This didn't seem right. Plus we had a bunch of 2-2s. At first blush we wanted to shut it out and declare it over and go straight to elims because it was so neat, and since every possible fifth round contest was a pull-up. At this point we had to push O’C aside as he had a horse in the race, and Kaz and I sorted it out. With a little snip here and a little tuck there, we managed to get everyone to debate a new singly pulled-up opponent, with the exception of the top 2, who remained byed, and the bottom two, who had debated before and were hence locked on the other side (which makes some sense in the flip-crazy world of PF). I mean, people did come to debate, not to sit around (except for the poor saps who were too good for the room). Interestingly enough, in the fifth round, a 2-2 did rise up to supplant one of the 3-1s, and as a result we had two natural semi rounds that worked beautifully. This is the kind of thing that makes tabbing fun. Most of the time you just click the button and it happens. Here, we shuffled the cards a dozen times. And the result was most pleasing (except, presumably, for the 3-1 team that was pushed out of the running, but that’s hardly a new story in any contest).

On this week to Bigle X with a marvelously full contingent: 1 PF team and 1 novice LDer. We’re going to need a bigger bus!

Your chance to be a Guest Star!!!

2012-01-05T19:30:00.000-05:00

We recorded a TVFT last night (sans Palmer), and it's been a long time. One thing we agreed on (we do occasionally agree on things) is that we'd like more people to join us in dialogue about...whatever. In this episode we talk about the warring civilizations of LD, the conservative folks versus the circuit folks. The problem is that rather than work together to create an LD environment that works for all, we tend to entrench at the coachean level, which doesn't really help anybody. A solid discussion leads to a dialect movement towards truth: we can create a synthesis based, first, on commonality. But only if we talk.

If you're interested in being on the podcast, let one of us know via email. All you need is a Skype account and the little microphone headset that came with your smartphone (unless you want to get all Larry King about it and rent a radio studio for the occasion). It's so simple even a child can do it. For that matter, it's so simple even me and Bietz and Cruz and Palmer can do it!

Go for it.

Bad juju

2012-01-04T19:30:00.000-05:00

I just got off the phone with the Crowne Plaza people. In addition to having extra Es lying around, which they dispose of willy-nilly, we discovered that I was totally unknown to them. This despite the fact that I had reserved 6 rooms in December for UPenn.

Well, stranger things have happened. I recalled distinctly that the woman I made the reservations with seemed a little… lo-res. And I had never received my email confirmations. What? Me worry? I figured it would sort out.

After we established that I had no reservations for the weekend of the tournament, I made new ones. 5 of them, instead of 6, which is why I was calling in the first place. This was doing fine until I tried to put one in for Panivore Junior. He, as it turned out, in his spalpeen way, already had a reservation. Except he had changed his first name to Nola (“like the city,” as the guy on the phone with the southern accent put it—very Dr. John of him). And lived on Fernwood Street. And his reservation had been made by someone named Jim Manic.

I remember making the reservation, but I hardly seemed manic at the time. In fact, I recall me being my usual mellow self, if you want to know the truth.

Anyhow, when all is sand and dunes, Dr. John and I spent about a half hour sorting this out as his creaky computer (he apparently was using a Commodore 64) kept stumbling around one piece of misinformation after another. But sort it out we did. I now have either 11 or 6 rooms for the Liberty Bell Classic. Sometime in February. Under the name of Sanders.

It’s things like this that keep it real.

Happy End of the Universe!

2012-01-03T19:30:00.000-05:00

It was a peaceful, quiet holiday, vis-à-vis forensics. Vis-à-vis everything else, for that matter. That’s not a bad thing, once in a while.

We did try to get a TVFT going, but we are becoming progressively more incapable of turning up at the same time as the eons progress. We’re going to try to get back to the Wednesday routine, and I think we’ll put something out even if it’s just me and O’C making Disneyland plans. Of course, we have more important stuff to talk about, to wit, the Jan-Feb resolution. Plenty of people have been talking about this elsewhere, but I have not been one of them. In a way, with such a limited commitment to LD at this point, I feel a little less than involved in the situation. But I have my opinions, and I would like to exercise them a bit with others. CP is strongly planted agin’ it, and I think Bietz was likewise. I want that conversation.

In the world of upcoming, this week is Byram Hills. It’s small and local, so should be simple enough. Then there’s Bigle X, which is always fun, although this time I’m only staying for the main event: no RR for me this year. They’ll have to provide their own beans for the trivia event (if any). On the other hand, it’ll be the first time in decades I’ve had that Sunday and Monday to myself. That will be a treat.

And then there’s the Gem of Harlem. The real problem there has been securing rooms. Without rooms you can’t accept entries, and there’s a lot of people hanging on, waiting to hear. I cleared off all the far-aways who needed plane tix, and have started on the locals mostly by when they entered. I should have a better idea of rooms by the end of this week. Then we can get serious, and even, just maybe, create a schedule.

Then again, this being the year the Mayans are proven right, we could go off into oblivion at any moment. I probably shouldn’t plan too far ahead. Aside from the Disneyland trip, that is. Me and O’C, together again. Set your Twitter feed on stun.

Full of beans

2011-12-21T19:30:00.000-05:00

It must be Christmas: the Sailors and I had a bout of Bean Trivia last night.

It was a rough session. First of all, O’C was unavailable for Ask Cruz. As a substitute, we had a lifeline which was “Call anybody you know and have them Google the answer.” That worked about as well as asking Cruz, since it seemed as if about half the questions were Disney-oriented. But I think I need better Sailors. They thought that “The Legacy” was one of the original hotels on the WDW property. I mean, they were close, except for the fact that there is not now nor has there ever been a hotel called “The Legacy” on the WDW property. This is made stranger because Rafi-Q says he stayed there last time he went. Little Em’ly claimed that she couldn’t answer those questions because she’d never been there. Come to think of it, every question she was asked, that was her answer: “I’ve never been there.” If you ask me, she needs to go somewhere.

We never had any answers to match last year’s Muppet classic, Hermit the Crab. But the event, as always, was rollicking and fun. There’s always the one person who answers the questions regardless of who’s being asked because, lordy lordy, they actually know the answer to this one. This is from a team who decided Fats Waller had to be a jazz musician because all jazz musicians have one-word nicknames, and that he must have played the tuba because he was fat. So, their deductive powers were marginally successful. They thought Lightnin’ Hopkins played the saxophone. They thought that TV’s talking horse was Dr. Ed, which at least gives him a day job. They came relatively close to identifying the main ingredient in haggis—they knew it came from inside the sheep—but went a little overboard claiming that cabbage was a subsidiary ingredient; on the other hand, they’d never heard of saltimbocca. Needless to say, be wary if any of them invites you over for dinner.

We went through my entire batch of questions, which means that next time out, all new categories. I may steer clear of Disney questions for a while, since these people have trouble deciding if Bambi is the character whose foot fit into the glass slipper. I would have thought that kids knew Disney pretty well, but I would have thought wrong. They also don’t know Muppets or classic movies. I think I do a fine impersonation of Anthony Perkins carrying his mother to the fruit cellar. They thought otherwise. They also thought that the character who says the line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” was named Frank.

You don’t want to know what they thought the main ingredient was in spotted dick. Remind me never to ask that question again.

Them's the rules

2011-12-20T19:30:00.001-05:00

I cleaned this up a little and took out some whining, but it's what I sent to the MHL membership this morning.

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1. No partial judges allowed. If a judge cannot make all 4 rounds in the day, please find another judge. The only way all debaters can debate all the rounds is if all the judges judge them. This is a mathematical fact of life.

Note: Schools that provide an amazing overage of trained/experienced judges, that may wish to allow some of them to relieve one another, are not the issue here, and such generosity of judge pool on their part remains encouraged and will continue to be supported.

2. No children in the tab room. If a kid has a problem, they tell the coach, and the coach comes to tab. If the coach isn't at the tournament, there is a responsible adult in lieu. Kids go to their coaches with problems, not to tab. Tab staff will make every effort at the beginning of the tournament to get all the rounds started and to sort out any loose ends, however. This is not a rule to isolate tab from the tournament, but simply an attempt at keeping the communication of problems at the appropriate level.

3. Most importantly, all registration is entirely electronic. Coaches have until 9 on the morning of the day to correct their entries in tab room. (This might mean that teams might have to find web access at the last minute, but there is no question that, if there is no wireless, nonetheless someone on every team has brought either a smartphone or iPad with 3G). Registration closes at 9, tab takes down the data and prints up the schematics. End of story.

It works like this: registration officially closes at 9:00 p.m. the previous Thursdays. No additions are allowed after this point, period. (The chief reasons for this are that we need to assign and sort out rooms and organize the amount of food necessary). All students and judges must be entered on the Thursday deadline. However, we understand that kids get sick, and things come up. So, you have until 9:00 on the morning of the tournament to sort it out. If you are coming from some distance on a bus, you can make your changes en route. If you are meeting at the school at a city event, plan on doing so well in advance of the 9:00 deadline. Students "on their way (maybe)" do not count as entries, and a team's inability to arrive in plenty of time for coaches to take attendance will not be considered an excuse. The idea that round one is the taking of attendance penalizes the students who are there on time and wish to debate and learn. A bye due to a no-show is not a debate. At some point before 9:00, a coach or adult (college students are NOT considered adults for this purpose unless they are employees of the school they are representing, i.e., official assistant coaches) will come to the registration desk and report that their registration is final. At 9:00, any schools that haven't come to the desk will be assumed absent, and their entry will be erased from the tournament. If in fact some of these missing folk are around, they can be added for round two with forfeits for round one. This will penalize the students of the school not registered rather than the students at the schools that did register. Schools en route by bus can text by 9:00 that their entry is set; it is not unreasonable to assume that they could miss the deadline by a few minutes because of traffic, but since they've had all that time on the bus they've had ample opportunity to set things aright on tabroom.com.

4. All reported changes after 9 are $25 each, payable at the making of the change. All unreported changes (e.g. teams that are registered that don't show up, missing judges) are $50. In the MHL, no teams will be allowed to participate in future events unless the fines are paid; they will be contributed to the Grameen org. In the CFL they will go toward the Fr Rippon scholarship.

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Some comments (that I didn't send, but I share with the VCA):

Coaches who complain that they can't meet the 9 a.m. deadline need to be asked why. Since I'm closing registration at 9 anyhow, why can't they have their team organized by then? In fact, it actually allows them to conveniently and efficiently handle last minute changes. What it doesn't allow is for them to not be there, or to be in a situation where they might as well not be there. It does not allow them to foist the responsibility for a whole team on one assistant college coach who has no idea what's going on in the other divisions. It also forces them to have their kids and judges there in a timely manner. As I say, the ramifications of their not giving accurate registrations is that the good debate citizens, other kids from other teams who have shown up on time and ready to go, suffer. This is not acceptable, and there is nothing in what I am suggesting that is onerous (except the fines for their inefficiency, which need to be onerous).

I will point out that we try to run 4 rounds at CFLs and MHLs to give the kids a better tournament experience, and more experience. Additionally, most of these events have judge training conducted by the tab staff; if the tab staff is still taking attendance through round 3, this valuable training cannot take place.

I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore

2011-12-19T19:30:00.000-05:00

Normally I am the soul of tolerance. I pride myself on my ability to fight off whatever the community tries to throw at me, like a Jedi waving my lightsaber here and there and everywhere, parrying the blasts from the warring clones or whatever is blasting at me and never batting an eye. But this last Saturday, I was O Kenobi sliced up by D Vader, and I doubt if I’ll come back stronger than ever.

No, wait a minute. It was O Kenobi who never really came back stronger than ever. He took his money and went home and counted it and aside from a couple of quick cameos, he never had to do anything else for Lucas other than cash his checks. I, on the other hand, bereft of residual checks, will indeed come back stronger than ever. You can lightsaber me into little pieces, but those little pieces will never die. So there.

The CFL event was a bloody mess, for a simple reason. Too many teams had too few people in charge. We have all sorts of rules about adults registering and the like, not only here but everywhere else, but in the crush of the event, we just want to get registration over with. And besides, we tend to believe people when they tell us their teams or judges are here. We should know better by now.

What happened was that, because the information we were given was bogus, the tournament was bogus. There were people who got byes in every round, not because they deserved them for some bizarre reason, but because they kept getting paired against yet another non-existent team. Some teams came and went. Judges seemed to think that this was a part-time gig, little realizing that when debaters wish to debate all the rounds, someone actually has to judge them. Startling, eh? By the end of the day I had reamed out every coach who had crossed me during the day. They know who they are.

But I rise from those little lightsabered pieces. I have new rules. I’m thinking to myself, why do we have everyone register electronically, then turn it off so that they have to do it manually? Why not just keep it electronic until the point where I’m going to download the data. Rather than them give me 50 changes (all of which, btw, are theoretically not acceptable, but I don’t want to screw the kids just because the coaches are disorganized), let them make 50 changes in tabroom. No wireless? Use a smartphone. It’s not a big deal. Then at 9:00, after a perfunctory check-in of the coaches at the table, I download the data and do it. That has to be better than screwing around trying to be accommodating to disorganized teams whose disorganization always inevitably penalizes the poor kids from the teams who were organized.

I’m circulating these new rules now, and will publish them here once everyone has signed off on them. If you run tournaments and you pull out your hair over last minute changes, and worse, changes after the last minute, perhaps help is on the way. Then again, perhaps not, but the $25 fine per, payable immediately or you're disinvited from the league might have some effect. It’s worked at Bump. This year I banked a paltry $120 into Grameen, down about a third from last year. People don’t like paying fines, and they don’t like it when I demand the published fine now, in person, put the money in the box. They find that, when push comes to shove, it’s better to get their information right.

I was admittedly as pissed off as I get this last weekend. I really have had enough. Get your act together, people. I’m not going to do your job for you, and I’m not going to let you get away with not doing it yourself. It’s just not that hard.

Jeesh.

And the prize for the biggest...

2011-12-14T19:30:00.000-05:00

I just noticed on Amazon that you can buy a Justin Bieber karaoke album. I presume that this means you get a Justin Bieber album without Justin Bieber singing on it. How can this not be a good thing?

Someone responded to my post about hanging around for the whole tournament with the suggestion that there should be more sweepstakes awards. These are not my cup of tea. For the most part, sweepstakes are contests among the big schools with mega entries, vying for the bragging rights of being the biggest school with the mega-est entries. These awards bounce around between the same few schools again and again, and while I’m sure they’re all as happy as clamlarks about them, they’re pretty unengaging to the hoi and the polloi from all the other schools. O’C has tried to counter this with sweeps for big and for small schools, but that really doesn’t solve the problem. Wherever you set the distinction for size, it stands to reason that whoever has the most entries has an edge, and why should there be a reward for having a lot of entries? My understanding is that sweeps are very popular with Speecho-Americans and their breeders, or at the very least traditional amongst them. If you like that sort of thing, fine, but given that most of the early sneak-outs are not from the big programs, and most of the people in the running for these are big programs, even if I was in favor, it wouldn’t solve the problem.

I should point out that some tournaments do not traffic in award ceremonies, and I have nothing against that. These tournaments tend to want to run toward efficiency and minimal pomp(osity), and if that is what they want to do, it is their tournament and I’m happy to go with the flow. But if a tournament builds in awards as a part of the event, so be it. And I remain unconvinced by the idea that people have a long way to travel, hence they want to leave early, because I have yet to see anyone who has a long way to travel leave early when they’re still in the tournament. (Well, aside from my daughter, that is, who used to say enough is enough and, in or out, she would lead the charge to the nearest restaurant and to hell with the tournament. She hasn’t changed much since then.)

Of course, my thoughts on people who leave early is merely opinion and open to disagreement. My thoughts on people who blow off their judging obligation is something else altogether. These people are the scum of the debate earth. As I run more and more tournaments I begin to know more and more of them by first name. It isn’t many, but it’s enough, and it’s always the same ones. I haven’t forgotten a scurrying judge yet. That will be the sign that I’m getting Old-Timer’s Disease, when I forget that you left me hanging without a judge. But of course, scurrying judges don’t read this blog. Then again, as I start excluding them from tournaments, they will start having the time to do so. Maybe they’ll put two and two together. But I doubt it.

Breaking wood

2011-12-12T19:30:00.001-05:00

If you graduated from school about three hundred years ago, you still get this thing toward the end of August when you start thinking about buying new composition books and wondering what the new year will be like. I get something similar around Bump weekend, except now it’s Ridge weekend, and they’re welcome to it. I’ve been over for a month now, and there is no greater satisfaction than having this year’s tournament already in the history books.

Ridge was normal, as far as the tournament went. MJP really does work fine for smaller events. (Come to think of it, the very first time we tested it was a Ridge 2 years ago.) We did learn this time out that you have to isolate the MJP event, i.e., don’t load up two divisions of LD when one of them is MJP because TRPC will just look at you funny and wave its finger at you. Also, it pays to blank out the A+s that automatically come in when no ranking was done, to distinguish them from real A+s. Other than that, it’s becoming rote.

The Sailors went full-bore into PF with an astounding record that would make weaker teams pale, but you’ve got to start somewhere, and this was a learning experience. So, what was learned? We’ll find out tomorrow night at the meeting, but for one thing, don’t dress in your furry mules and look as if you’re one bowl of popcorn short of a Twilight home video marathon. There may be more, but that may be the most crucial.

On the coaching side, we learned never to go to that horrible place on Friday night again, because they’re so loud that the only way we could communicate was by texting. We ended up in CP’s room watching people break wood with their heads, which is about the only thing that happened that I can mention in polite company or, for that matter, impolite company. Some things you just can’t blog.

The Tiggers

2011-12-08T19:30:00.000-05:00

Princeton has come and gone. Some thoughts.

First of all, we made a conscious decision upfront that we would feature the PF division. It had the biggest TOC bid, and at colleges these days, it’s a big draw. This was absolutely the right decision, I think. We opened 160 slots, and never really had much of a falloff. The field was well-balanced, and geographically diverse, with a lot of Florida folk adding a little sunlight to the proceedings. Dario was handed the data and sent forth, and managed to run everything on time in the expected transparent fashion, and we realized once again that Florida’s gain was our loss, but he loves it down there so what can you do? One thing about transplanted northerners: they know better than to show up in New Jersey in December in short pants. This may be how you can separate the nuts from the coconuts, so to speak.

The second big decision was, rather than trimming the fields, running the LD divisions back to back. I think this went well too. We had to move into PF rooms on Saturday night and got slightly hung up, but not for more than 10 minutes in one or two cases, so that wasn’t a problem, and the word on the street was that having a couple of hours off between rounds makes the day a joy. I remember when Pton used to do that, and I was judging, and that’s exactly how I felt. Throwing in some nice weather (albeit not enough for short pants) didn’t hurt. Even if we can get the HS back next year for PF, I think I’d still stagger the LDs. It just makes for a nice weekend.

Inside LD tab, there were a few things I would change. I thought there would be more interplay between the divisions, so I put everything on one machine, but that proved to be unnecessary, and a bit of a burden in the crunch times. Also, watching O’C balance the tournament on two computers because one is at death’s door and the other must be kept clear from the evil influence of Windows, was like watching a drunk tightrope walker crossing Niagara in a hurricane. Also also, I forgot my new little speaker system, meaning there was a noticeable lack of hula music during the weekend, although Abdul did manfully try to fill in the gap with some of his more obscure material; problem is, computer speakers just don’t do the job, even when you turn them up to 11.

MJP went well, although we discovered that you have to doublecheck that all the prefs do travel from tabroom to trpc. Most do, some don’t. Go figure. We also offered strikes in PF, as it turns out to resounding disinterest. A couple of schools took advantage, but not many. One school that I know about objected. Dario’s conclusion was that they’re okay because those who wanted them, had them, and those who didn’t have them weren’t harmed. We had thought long and hard about this before the tournament, and I’d say that the results are that the jury is still out. I’m not going to do it again for a while, although I did strongly recommend that they do it at ~~the PF snake pit~~ TOC. We’ll see.

Anyhow, overall Princeton has, I think, kicked itself into the top ranks of college tournaments. The students running it are committed, and they’ve got a good system that keeps them in it over the years to oversee that it’s working well. They did a great job, and rule number one of any college tournament is that the host must be totally committed. They were, and the results were clear.

Hello I Must Be Going

2011-12-07T19:30:00.000-05:00

In my gracious way, I admit that there is a great temptation to leave a tournament one is not in to get home early. But let’s face it: that’s only true if you’re not in it. Your original plans included being in it, so it’s not as if you haven’t accounted for staying for the whole thing. So ducking out and heading home is not the original plan, it’s the contingency plan, and as I said, I’m mostly against it. At a big tournament, and in the light of a long trip, I can understand it, of course, and make exceptions. I still believe that attending break rounds should be a mandatory part of any team’s participation in a tournament, but leaving a touch early, and even before awards, does make sense if you have to drive forever, and it’s the difference between getting home at 10 o’clock at night or 2 in the morning.

But in my experience, the worst offenders for leaving a tournament, including CP’s own Lexington tournaments, are not the world travelers. It is not the schools who have a long distance home, for whom exceptions might be made. It is more often than not a school with virtually no commute whatsoever. I get this at Bump, too. Neighborhood schools are the first to disappear. They are also usually the first to get dropped out of the tournament. If they hung around a bit, they might learn something. And if they stayed for a ceremony, they might become a part of the community rather than just forensic remoras.

A commenter suggested having supplementary events, which I guess does pass the time, but I would prefer the time to pass observing others in the main events, for their own benefit in aid of improving their competitiveness. Also, as one winds down a tournament, one focuses on the big issues of breaking and pairing and whatnot with what’s left; finding time (and room, and staff) to organize a supplementary event would be difficult at most tournaments. I’m not necessarily against it, but it wouldn’t be my first choice.

On the duality of the Ivy League tournament

2011-12-06T19:30:00.000-05:00

My phone rings in the tab room. I answer it. “Hello?”

“Hi. I’m lost.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“So what exactly do you think I can do for you?”

Part two.

The phone rings again. Same number. “Hello?”

“Hi. I’m in East Pyne. Where’s room 8?”

“That depends on where you are.”

“I’m in East Pyne.”

Part three.

The phone rings again. Same number.

I ignore it.

At a tournament like Princeton, in the debate divisions at least, there are actually two tournaments going on. One of these tournaments is populated by the usual suspects in the field and in the judging pool. The debaters go to their rounds and debate, and judges pick up their ballots and go to their rounds and adjudicate, and it’s just like every other tournament they go to. It could be Lexington or Bump or Jake or Glenbrooks or whatever. Everyone knows their role, and everyone performs according to the script. Things run pretty close to schedule, and a swell time is had by all.

And then there’s the other tournament, populated by debaters and judges who have crawled out from under their local forensic rocks who have never seen the sun before and don’t understand the concepts of light and heat. It is as if they have never attended a tournament before in their life, and that may not be far from the truth. I have known of schools with a debate team—they think—that only goes to one tournament a year, inevitably an Ivy Leaguer. That is the depth of their tournament commitment. These are the ones who can’t read a schedule (although to my understanding, debate tournaments aren’t the only things in the universe with a schedule, but I could be wrong about that). They can’t read a map. They don’t show up at general assemblies to hear announcements, and then when they don’t do what they’re supposed to do, which was clearly outlined in the announcements at the general assembly they didn’t attend, they complain to you that you’re not giving them the information they need. They are the first in line for the free food, if any, even if you’ve hidden the serving time in the footnotes of the schedule and hidden the location in the footnotes of the map, and only let it be known that there was any food by announcing it at the general assembly: some things they are good at. They can’t believe that you expect them to judge almost every round! The horror! (My comment to them when they make this complaint is that they don’t have to judge every round, but tell us which rounds you don’t want to judge so that we can also let your debaters have that round off too. They look at me strangely for a while until they figure out what I’m saying, and then they wander off.) They think that “I got here late” is an acceptable excuse for missing a round. (I didn’t get here late. I got up early and allowed plenty of time. You didn’t. This is my problem?)

That seems to be the thing about college tournaments, from an operational standpoint. The usual suspects go about their business admirably, and you spend the rest of your time explaining what a debate tournament is to the unusual suspects. Sometimes it’s sort of fun, because not all the unusual suspects are weasels (nor are all the usual suspects furry little kittens). But by the same token, if we’re trying to pair the next round with MJP, your standing there with a dumb question is, shall we say, ill-timed. Your coming into the tabroom at all is ill-conceived. For that matter, anyone’s coming into the tabroom is ill-conceived. Yes, the tabroom is quiet. We like it that way. It’s also ours. But there’s always tab leeches. The thing is, yes, you’re here to quietly grade papers, but then your phone rings and your team has vomited in the boys’ room or somesuch, and the rest of us are just trying to work on getting the tournament run. What is it about the sterling personalities of the tab staff that attracts people who want to hang out with them? It’s certainly not because we’re the cool kids (except maybe Abdul). I’ve met us. We raise boring to new heights. We think Sporcle is important. We generate more paper than the IRS. There has to be other places to hang out. There has to be cooler kids than us somewhere.

Anyhow, if you’re wondering, the Tiggers was a great tournament from my perspective. Phenomenally large PF field, solid LD and speech fields, great operational team amongst the Tigs—they couldn’t do much better. And I enjoyed watching the two simultaneous tournaments transpire around me. I don’t suggest that anything could change the duality. I just find it interesting. It is the curse of the college tournament.

Whatever happened to class?

2011-12-05T19:30:00.000-05:00

If we are in this tournament, we’re in it to the bitter end, because that’s the kind of competitors we are. On the other hand, if we’re out of it, we’re out of there like a shot, because, well, that’s the kind of competitors we are.

I love the message that sends: We only compete to compete. There is nothing else about a debate tournament of value. And if we’re not competing, screw it. We’re taking our judges and going home.

As someone who values least the competitive aspect of debate compared to all the other aspects, this really annoys me. And I’m not even talking about people honoring their obligation to judge, which is an obvious ethical commitment which, if you don’t honor it, is a violation of the rules on your part. There’s not much to discuss there. At a big tournament like Princeton, at least in LD there was a satisfyingly small number of people who blew off their obligations, but there still was a number of people. This is not worth a lot of discussion here, because it’s too obvious. Going to a tournament implies a commitment to the rules of the tournament on your part; what else do we need to say?

“Why do we have to stay and judge if our kids aren’t competing?”

“Would you stay if your kids were competing?”

“Of course.”

“And who would judge them if everyone was like you and left before fulfilling their obligation?”

Duh.

But let’s look at the team that does fulfill its obligation and then immediately leaves. (Usually, this is after griping about the obligation, by the way, but what else do you expect from these people?) As I said above, they are sending the message to their team that the only thing that matters at a tournament is winning. As soon as you lose, go home. This means that you don’t watch break rounds, which is one of the great aspects of not advancing into them. If you love debate, you want to watch the good people just for entertainment. If you actually value competition, you’ll want to learn from them. And if you value education, you’ll want not only the learning of how better competitors compete, but seeing what they’re running. Maybe you’ll pick up some great evidence or some great approach you hadn’t thought of. Teams that don’t break learn to break by watching teams that do break. Did you ever notice that the teams that don’t break pretty much always don’t break, and the teams that do break pretty much always do break?

Also, the nature of break rounds is not the same as prelims. Any student who wants or expects to break, needs to learn how to handle that difference. Watching others handle it (or not) is how you learn.

So there is an obvious benefit to the teams that observe break rounds. They will learn something they can never learn in the comfort of their own debate room back home. That alone is sufficient reason to stay on at a tournament, for one’s own benefit.

But there is another reason, and in fact it is more related to competition per se. It is the idea of good sportsmanship. Good sportsmanship means that you honor your competitors, whether you win or lose. This means going to the award ceremony not just to cheer the people from your team who won, but the people from other teams who beat you. So and so did the best DI or was the top LDer or was the PF top speaker: good sportsmanship demands that you, who were none of those things, honor those who were. The respect of one’s peers is one of the highest rewards for work well done, and that is what award ceremonies—and staying for them—is all about. My favorite schmucks? The ones whose activity is announced, and then, carrying their trophies, they march out of the auditorium passing in front of the podium while the remainder of the categories are announced. They couldn’t wait another ten minutes?

Does no one have manners any more?

Whatever happened to class?

Bronx Funnies

2011-11-29T12:26:00.002-05:00

Corporate personage

2011-11-24T09:08:00.000-05:00

A little debate reading for the holiday:

What Is A Person?

Hit me with your best shot

2011-11-22T19:30:00.000-05:00

Where is CP when you need him?

I told the Tigs that I would CP for them this year. Last year we had no central clearing person, and we did fine, but off and on I felt the need of that person, hence the volunteering. It goes well, to tell you the truth, but even though I understood before why CP had had enough of doing this for everyone, just doing it for one is proof positive that he made the right choice. It’s just plain time-consuming.

First of all, there’s rooms. The Tigs dig around trying to find ever more and more, because we want nice numbers. There’s ways of getting around this—the old way at Tiggerville, essentially, staggering VLD and NLD—other than going straight up, but straight up is so much nicer and efficient. Then again, I used to love those two hour breaks when I was judging. I doubt if it will happen, but we’re still not out of the woods yet. The thing is, while there is always a big fall-off before registrations are locked, we haven’t reached that point yet. And meanwhile, there’s still big debate waitlists, and there’s no way they’ll ever get totally cleared. Therein lies the rub.

Some people think you’re discriminating against them personally. Now granted, there are people I am happy to discriminate against personally, but none of them are on the Tigger waitlist. I absolutely follow the CP rule of, first, take from afar (in order of signup), then everyone else (in order of signup), predicated on the idea that the further away you are, the harder it is to make last minute plans. In other words, get the plane people in first.

Then there’s the judges for hire. The way this works is, we acquire X number of judges. We sell X-.2X, which keeps some spares for tab. Then you sell the judges, again in order of preference, first come, first served, until they’re all gone. (Here, I don’t care much about flying people. If they can afford to fly, they can afford another seat on the plane.) And nobody gets to cover 48 entries. The judges are divvied up equally. When there’s no more judges, no more are sold. Just like iPhones. If they ain’t got, they ain’t got. End of story.

Of course, people know I’m pulling the levers, so they come to me with their reasons why they should get slots/judges rather than someone else. Some people just ask what the odds are, and they get a straightforward answer. I understand that. Other people tell me why they deserve the slots: they’ve been coming since the Tiggers were kittens, they’re very powerful in the NFL and will tell the Wunn and Only that I’m the dirt on the soles of debate’s rubber overshoes, their registration was done by the village idiot who happened to be sitting at their computer that night and they shouldn’t be held accountable, etc., etc., etc. To which the obvious replies should be, they’re not kittens anymore so don’t put your hand in the cage, he already thinks that, and don’t ask me to distinguish between you and the village idiot, etc., etc., etc. In fact, I just tell them I’m working on it, and they will be served by the number just like everyone else at the deli, except now I am less than excited about making their acquaintance in Jersey next week.

Then again, they don’t want to meet me either.

Doing the Sailor Math = 3.5

2011-11-21T19:30:00.000-05:00

I’m not quite sure why there was so much Bumpitis this year, but I know O’C was suffering from it, as was I. I’m just starting to recover now. Maybe it was just a cold, but who needs a cold during debate season? It’s just not right. Feeling like death eating a fig newton has not helped in my resolve to blog more often…

Well, to sum up Bump, since I cut off writing in mid-tournament, it was like every other Bump in most respects, except for those where it was different. There was no wrap-up dinner at India House, which O’C had invited himself to, because apparently now he’s a Hen Hud alum. I missed that. The problem was that people had to head back to whence they came on the Sunday night. A few of us did hit a local gin mill on Saturday night, and that was nice (whatever happened to 21-Point Treinish, I wonder, who was going to meet us there). I value more than anything seeing all the old faces again. That is so what it’s all about.

Of course, I’m not adding many new old faces. One of my 2.5 novices quit on the way home from Itsy Bitsy Lex complaining that debate just wasn’t fun. This was a kid who gave it a good shot, not one of these pikers who show up a time or two and never debate. I approve of his retirement style: he gave it a good shot. Unfortunately, that means we have 0 seniors, .75 juniors, 1.25 sophomores and 1.5 freshmen. Not only can I fit them all in my car, I can fit them into the bag with my printer if I have to. Needless to say, we spent a lot of time discussing recruitment on the way back from IBL, but mostly Zip seemed intent on getting people on a more match.com paradigm than a “got brains-will argue” paradigm. Whatever. In any case, with the season half over, it’s back to the drawing board for next year. We need the continuity!

Meanwhile, things have been heating up for the Tiggers. I’ve volunteered to help them run things, and we’re in pretty good shape with tabbers and judges and whatnot. We could use a few more rooms, though. Whatever. If we get them, good, if not, we adjust. The right number of rounds, good adjudication and efficient operation can ameliorate an odd schedule. As a good sign, O’C is in charge of their trophies. This is like putting the Pope in charge of the Catholics: regardless of what you think of Catholicism, you know that the whole bloody mess is in good hands. Ditto O’C and the trophies avec le pomp and circ.

But mostly I’m looking forward to a few days off. Sleep, blessed sleep. No DJ, no nothin’. And it’s just around the corner.

Bump 2011 Pt 3

2011-11-16T19:30:00.000-05:00

All tournaments are more or less the same in that stuff happens, a lot like stuff that has happened before, and we muddle through it.

Fact: If judges can find a way to get out of judging, a surprising number of them will. Not all, of course. In fact, the majority are perfectly responsible, especially at a high school tournament in the middle of nowhere, where there’s nothing better to do. But there’s always more than you expect who will use any excuse to do that nothing better. Inevitably, they will blame you for their not showing up. Don’t bother to argue: you both know that you’re right and they’re lying, so why waste the breath?

Fact: If you don’t threaten student judges with death, dismemberment and dental surgery, and then don't keep an eye on them 24/7, they will do things they shouldn’t do in a classroom, like take the teacher’s stuff. Next year at Bump there will be one novice round fewer, and I’ll be patrolling the halls with the eye of the proverbial eagle. Considering that debaters tend, as a rule, to be fairly smart, one has to wonder where they get the stupid pills on tournament days.

Fact: A parent judge whose phone rings three times during a round will answer it on the fourth ring and leave the room in the middle of a speech. The good news is that this in no way impinges on that judge’s ability to make a decision, because the judge had no idea what she was going in the first place. Jeesh.

Fact: You are not going to get all of your ballots, no matter how careful we are. This is a debate tournament, and ballot-sorting is the dullest job in the place. The mind wanders. And you know, this isn’t the first time you didn’t get all your ballots, is it? Why do you looked so shocked? Do you really think we have a secret stash somewhere, and we're just hiding them on you out of spite?

Fact: In MJP, the judge most likely not to show up is the hardest to replace. How do they know?

Fact: In MJP, if you’re not judging every round, it’s because you are not mutually preferred, not because I want you in the judges’ lounge at all times.

Fact: Why do the makers of signs all agree that apostrophes are optional? Judges may lounge in the library, but the point is to have a judges’ lounge in the library. Of course, that’s still better than some schools where the sign has said Welcome Debators.

Fact: We are doomed.

Bump 2011 Pt 2

2011-11-15T19:30:00.000-05:00

I made a big mistake, mostly because I hadn’t given it much thought. Registration was from 10:30 to 11:30, with the first round shortly thereafter. I had sort of assumed that people would grab something to eat in the interim from the various places around the school, but I had never articulated that they should, and there was nothing for sale from us, much less given away. This led to many hungry debaters, apparently, but if it’s any consolation, I didn’t get any lunch either. I ascribe this to the novelty of the whole Saturday-Sunday thing. If that ever happens again, I will be prepared.

I did kick off the event with a judge meeting in which my performance was comparable to Rick Perry debating Herman Cain about which cabinet department to abolish in Libya. I hadn’t prepared anything, and I kept losing the point of what I was saying in an attempt to say way too much. So much for that. Rule number one of public speaking: have something to say. Next time I’ll prepare my rambling remarks rather than extemping them without virtue of having picked a topic. In any case, the judges did go on and judge, so I guess I didn’t scare them too much. I’m sure half of them feared for my sanity, though. So did I. I still do, for that matter.

It was good to have worked Kaz into the proceedings, with her working down at the grammar school with O’C. Two people just makes more sense. They went on down first, and had an odd moment of two sorting out a couple of rooms with the custodians, but nothing horrible they couldn’t handle. And up at the high school, JV and CP attacked MJP and put out their rounds, and at both venues everything began pretty much as planned and on schedule.

One fly in the ointment was that the school refused to let us have the teachers’ lounge, so our judges’ lounge became two lounges, one the detention room with food and one the other the library with comfy chairs, with the judges asked not to meet the twain (i.e., don’t sleep in the food and don’t eat in the comfy chairs). Surprisingly enough, that worked out, especially once we remembered to bring up skems from the other school to chivvy out the novice judges who were stuffing their faces and/or snoozing. In fact, most judges hung out in the detention room, despite its understandable lack of comfy chairs (HHHS probably doesn’t want to encourage detentioneers by offering cozy accommodations). Judges want to eat more than sleep, apparently. Except in rounds, but that’s understandable, I guess.

By the way, we didn’t collect much in fines this year, at least at the registration table. That’s a good thing in many ways, but it means less money for charity. There was some, though, which is all we ask.

Bump 2011

2011-11-14T19:30:00.000-05:00

You know your tournament is over when you get a notice on Foursquare that O’C has checked into Japonica…

It was weird not starting on Friday. I took that afternoon off to get the trophies and set up the data. The trophy guy just wanted to complain to me how he had to buy a generator when the electricity went out. I found this about as interesting as you think I found it, but since I want my trophies on time next year I figured I would hear him out. Then I packed up my car with the new ones, headed home, and added the leftover ones from last year. At this point there was an awful lot of tin in the chariot; we give out a lot of trophies at this shindig. Maybe not Jakian numbers, but enough.

After that, it was uploading the data and entering the rooms and whatnot. MJP closed late in the day, so I added that the next morning, but by the end of the afternoon I had TRPC ready to go in both novice and varsity land, plus I had a nap, a carful of trophies, and a fervent wish for it all to end.

Kt came up Friday, and CP stayed over, and we went to my favorite local restaurant where JV joined us, and a lot of duck confit was consumed by a grateful nation. Best Friday night at Bump ever, but, alas, Bump wasn’t half over yet. Still, it was nice to sleep in on Saturday, as much as anyone can when they’re running a tournament that day. Scared up a nice platter of pancakes and sausage and lattes and grapefruit and Beatle music in the background, which made this the best Saturday morning of Bump ever.

Then I went to the school. I mean, I had to go sooner or later...

On the verge of Bump

2011-11-11T10:11:00.002-05:00

I keep thinking I should do this more often, and then I can’t find the time. Having that other blog just absorbs what went into this one. I will try to stop whining and figure out either a way to get this one back up to speed or else I’ll put it into hibernation or redefine it or something. I owe the VCA that.

Bump is this weekend, but I can’t say I’ve been agonizing about it much. Having the Saturday-Sunday thing has forced a few changes, but something changes every year anyhow, so more changes don’t matter terribly. The thing is, after you’ve done this for a while, it’s just not that big a deal. I don’t want to suggest that complacency has set in, because I’m doing some new things in the novice divisions (no breaks unless it looks like a demo round makes sense, which I won’t know until it happens), and we’re trying MJP in VLD, an interesting continuing experiment with a tournament this size. And there’s some new schools in the mix, so it’s not entirely the same old same old. It’s more that, honestly, after you’ve done it for over a decade, the machine works pretty well. Tabroom.com takes the registrations and handles housing (although nobody seems to be able to figure out how to change a name and keep housing, which is probably an interface issue), parents get the same food for the same meals, the housing list is the same folks over and over, we get the same classrooms, yadda yadda yadda. What else is there? Not to suggest that all of this isn’t a lot of work, but it’s work on well trodden paths. The way is clear.

Then again, last year we didn’t give the Jon Cruz Award, so one can screw up on the ground, but that is neither here nor there. (Actually, the truth about last year’s award, which people thought I had forgotten, was that we couldn’t find a worthy recipient. Which just goes to show that The Jon Cruz Award, “which is given to Jon Cruz every year for no particular reason whatsoever,” isn’t quite the no-brainer people thought it was.)

I’m happy to report that people at the DJ have been throwing away the most godawful DVDs, which I’ve managed to intercept on the way to the toxic waste dump, thus insuring that at least one tradition—crappy prizes—will stand. And presumably O’C will remember to bring the traveling (fruit) cup (if he has it, unless someone else has it, in which case you can kiss that sucker goodbye), and also to pack the new medals, moving in to replace the rather sad sack mugs that I still have a million of. And somewhere in the chez is the box of t-shirts that I have to figure out what to do with.

So, Bump goes on. Maybe I’ll see you there. Maybe you’ll even be this year’s winner of the Jon Cruz Award. It could happen.

Oh, yeah. We start reading Nietzsche in pre-school.

2011-11-07T19:30:00.000-05:00

The Monticello MHL was an oddball, in that instead of having four rounds we had three plus a workshop session. Kaz handled policy, talking about 5 different technical apsects of debate. O’C had a PF demo. I talked morality for LD.

It seemed to go well. My goal was to present the basic lines of thinking about morality, and eventually to tie them into Nov-Dec. So I started with the question of whether there even was such a thing as right and wrong, one someone went off into multi-culturism, and someone else cited Nietzsche’s belief that there is no truth. Did I say that I love debaters? I heavily leaned on x phi stuff, the scientific bases of morality (if any). That the trolley examples travel cross-culturally undermines a lot of cultural morality analysis, and for that matter, just because someone believes something, even if a whole culture believes something, doesn’t make that thing right/moral. It’s a nice belief though, having respect for other cultures. It may not stand if there are inherent evils that a given culture perpetrates. In any case, all of this leads to explaining consequentialism and deontology, then into Hauser and Haidt and Singer, and by then, you’ve given them some decent stuff to start the new topic on (the northeast Modest Novices debate civil disobedience through the end of this month, and get only one month on the supererogatory topic which I continue to believe is among the worse ever for anyone other than novices struggling with morality research).

So I sped along for about and hour and then ran out of gas, which was pretty good. I asked them about the modnov topic, and they were iffy about it. One kid said he would have preferred animal rights because all you had to do was ask if the judge had a pet and then you always won on the aff. Cute: you gotta love novices. This kid needs to read more of that Nietzsche his colleague was digging into.

Then on the way home I had one of those magical moments that makes debate so interesting to me. In the back seat a heated conversation was unfolding comparing the merits of the various LOTR movies. I was asked which one was my favorite, and I said the one with Snooki. “Snooki was in a LOTR movie?” I was asked. “Yes,” says I, “the one with the elves.” “Oh, that must be the second one. That’s your favorite, then?” “Sure,” says I, hopeful that I will somehow be instrumental in starting an urban myth that Snooki played an elf in the second LOTR movie. This stuff has to come from somewhere, after all. Why not me?

The ship of Hud is scarcely manned

2011-11-03T19:30:00.000-04:00

It’s hard to say if the number of plebes (and for that matter, Sailors as a whole) is ridiculously diminished in general or if we’re just going through fits and starts, including the Regiscopalypse storm that still had people cut off from the world through Tuesday’s meeting. Only my most reliable plebes showed up, plus Zip, and we did some work and about as much schmoozing, but three people doesn’t make for much momentum. It’s sort of disheartening, because momentum is what carries a team along. An individual can proceed on his or her own momentum, because an individual doesn't look to a team for support of any kind. But a team makes arrangements and argues different topic approaches and plays cards and does all sorts of things that, at the moment, the Sailors aren’t doing much of. My vision of encompassing both LD and PF suffers if I can barely find a one-person team to do LD.

Sigh.

We also didn’t TVFT last night. I admit being personally pooped lately (too much DJ, mostly, for extracurriculars beyond my normal extracurriculars), but I think part of it was that we couldn’t agree on a topic, and if we have nothing much to talk about, schmoozing publicly doesn’t make a lot of sense. The shows should at least attempt to be about something if we really want anyone to listen to them. We did commit to next week, sort of, in the way we have of committing to things. We’ll see what happens.

This weekend is the Monticello MHL. We’re going to try to squeeze a little workshop into that, with me on morality, O’C on PF and Kaz on policy, but at the moment, there isn’t much of a PF signup. Maybe that will change as we near the deadline.

Monticello was also going to host another two-day event, in the place of the suspended Scranton event, but apparently they couldn’t get the numbers high enough. It is hard to add a new tournament or switch gears too much in this business. Schools are not what we would call flexible, and making arrangements is hard enough without having to make rearrangements. Anyone who doubts that bureaucracy is alive and well has nothing to do with school administration…

And meanwhile, Bump cometh. It’s fully subscribed, and now we should get the last-week dropoff. And we’ve cleared off the top of the Princeton waitlists in debate, and sorted out the rooms, so we’re in good shape there. We made the fields a little bigger. People traveling from kingdom come are now all off the list; next up will be the locals. Unlikely anyone will get any extra slots, given the numbers. We’ll see.

This is how the world ends, not with a bang but with a CFL tournament

2011-10-31T19:30:00.000-04:00

The Regiscopalypse was last Saturday. Normally this is a cheerful little event around Halloween, with four joyful rounds and every now and then I pop out for a latte, and Grandma Julia—Regis’s resident bubbe, so to speak—lays out a judge spread that demonstrates clearly that all the money amassed by the Vatican has not been going to waste. This year they had meatloaf, mac and cheese and sliced Virginia ham in addition to the usual sandwiches and salads.

If I had known what was coming, I would have taken a doggy bag. A couple of them.

I was, as the saying goes, busier than a one-armed paperhanger. First we got round one out, then I did PF judge training, then I got round two out, then I did LD judge training, then I got round 3 out and read the texts from my wife telling me that the world was ending and did I want to be at Regis when Gabriel blew his trumpet, to which I guess I would have to answer that if I had to be anywhere, this was a fairly good choice. Fortunately Catholic Charlie was around to help me with the ballots. Since all the divisions were about as balanced as some really imbalanced thing [fill in your own metaphor here; I’m too cold and exhausted], we had to use cards every time, the only fun in that being that I can show off being able to use cards. Yeah, I know. Big deal.

At one point in the day I got a text from JV down at Whitman telling me that O’C had wandered off from their tab room, asking if I had seen him. Then I started getting texts from O’C about some stuff or other about the Tiggers or something, all of which was interesting enough but, honestly, I was doing that one-armed p.h. thing. The funny thing is, after training the PF parents, having to train the LD parents was like sending off your troops into a suicide mission. You know that their efforts will be futile and that they will never survive, but you need them as a momentary distraction as the enemy mounts an offensive on the Marne or something. The best I could do is promise the survivors that we will look out for them in the future and keep them away from the beast of VLD.

Oy.

Anyhow, after shutting down, we headed north. I had two plebes in my car, both of whom fell asleep as I played music from WDW to distract me from the fact that it looked like a scene from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe as directed by Jean-Luc Godard, in 3-D and Smellovision. One drove at a handful of miles per hour through pure white, on ice, surrounded by fallen and falling trees, the sky ever darkening, occasionally going nowhere in a line of traffic extending forever, watching roads expand and contract from three lanes to half a lane and back again. After finally reaching home, the power was out, the house was cold, and the silence was maddening. Fortunately there was juice in my portable speakers so we listened to Hawaiian music.

Never underestimate the healing power of the ukulele!

The Wizard of OS

2011-10-26T19:30:00.000-04:00

I’ve been mulling this for a while. Since I have an iPad and an iPhone, both now nattily upgraded to IOS 5, the question was, what about the computer? The beauties of the cloud are sort of lost if you don’t throw all your hardware into it. But I’ve got Velvet Elvis so nicely honed through years of experience, including the running of tournaments using VMWare Fusion, that I was loath to mess around with it. Since the DJ is within walking distance of an Apple store, I started cruising the mall with techlust in my heart.

These were the options:

1. Status quo, and no computer connection to the IOS 5 devices. But this is like buying a convertible and never putting the top down.
2. A new computer. Either I bought a Mac Mini and set up a new desktop, which would be the cheaper alternative, or I bought an Air, which has the virtue of inherent sexiness. I played with the Air a bit (the little one). Since in Lion you can expand the window to screen size, it was just about the same as Velvet Elvis, all things considered. But then the question is, does this tiny sucker become my home computer? That didn’t make sense. And the problem was an anchor computer, not an extra travel companion; VV already travels fine.
3. Bite the proverbial bullet and upgrade.

I knew that, one way or another, I could upgrade VV and still have TRPC somewhere. Worst case scenario is my Dell. So, I bit the bullet and visited the Mac App Store for the very first time on Monday night. Two minutes later I was downloading Lion.

Installing a new operating system is the sort of thing you do in your sleep. I mean, you start the installation, and then you go to bed, because it takes forever. And sure enough, yesterday morning as I was heading out the door to the DJ, I checked VV and there was a little welcome message explaining the brave new world of gestures to me. I gestured to the machine to be patient and went off to work.

Last night, after meeting with the Sailors, I attacked the Windows issue. I had realized at some point during the day that I hadn’t backed up my Windows stuff, which was no great loss, but would mean finding my Round Robin schema and reinstalling Word and Excel. By the way, the versions of Word and Excel that I run (this is XP, folks) are so old that in Word the alphabet only has 24 letters (Q and W weren’t invented yet) and Excel thinks that infinity is somewhere in the neighborhood of 42. Whatever. When I clicked on the icon to run my old version of Fusion, I was told about the difference between 32 and 64 bits in no uncertain terms, and that was that. So, I got the latest version of Fusion for Lion, and downloaded that. By now I was realizing that even though once upon a time I had set up Fusion like a house a’fire, I had forgotten how I had done it and would be faced with the daunting challenge of doing it again. Oh joy. Oh rapture.

And of course, I couldn’t install Fusion as an upgrade. I tried to install it as a second version of the software, keeping the first, having some dream that I could figure out how to port over stuff, but I couldn’t do that either. Sigh. So, I replaced the old Fusion with the new Fusion.

And all my Windows stuff was there! All my apps! My various versions of TRPC, including the one that does tenths of a point for judges who can tell the difference between a 27.3 performance and a 27.4. Word, Excel, RRs, pictures of O'C getting Cinderella's autograph—everything!

Life is good.

So, everything seems to be running well. I purchased some iTunes music, and sure enough afterwards it was in the cloud for every device. The calendar and contacts are humming. My version of iPhoto is too old to be clouded, but the comments in the App store say that this really isn’t working yet, so I can wait.

Tonight I check the printer drivers; they’re the sort of thing that almost inevitably require upgrades with a new OS, and the last thing I want to do is arrive at Regis Saturday unable to print a schematic. But the bottom line is, as with every other OS 10 upgrade I’ve done, and I’ve done them all, it was relatively painless. Next up is looking at the new features, which may or may not appeal (I’ve already sort of bought into the inverse scrolling).

And think of all the money I saved! Now maybe I can buy that Jambox…

One Time Only! Special Panivore Post!

2011-10-25T19:30:00.000-04:00

The Debutante Ball

2011-10-24T19:30:00.000-04:00

The 2011 First-Timers’ (and Some Old-Timers’) event now joins a billion other tournaments in the annals of forgotten history, except by O’C, who memorizes all the results just in case there’s a pop quiz some day. Somehow we didn’t get the policy results posted; Kaz gave me empty files, so she’s poking around her computer and should come up with something shortly. Perish the thought that the results not enter history. It’s small things like this that send the O’Cs of life over the edge.

We had not one but two schools trying to put sophomores in as judges. This has never been allowed, and it’s clear on the website, and now I’ve asked CP to help us incorporate something into tabroom.com as well. Meanwhile I’ll have to choice but to check all the judges against team rosters: quelle pain, as they say in France (although when they do, they’re probably talking about bread, which is a comment that proves that, once again, if you were smarter, I’d be funnier). I tend to take a mean view of shenanigans, as the VCA well knows. I have no compunctions about tossing people out of tournaments, and I intend to continue that practice. The good news is that the violators are always the same people, over and over again. Recidivism runs high in debate circles. Go figure.

We had the tournament at Bronx Scientology, which looks exactly the same as it did last week for Big Jake. Even the postings and announcements were still taped to the various walls. I would suggest that if the custodians expect to get trophies for cleaning up after the tournament, they might want to get on the stick.

The tournament itself was nonstop busy work. JV and Abdul did some training while Kaz and I data’d it up, then Abdul came by to help enter and JV went to California to try to break into the movies or something. O’C was shocked that I managed to pull off a 6:30 award ceremony and four rounds. Actually it was 6:35 but You Know Who was, as always, the last ballot in. (Yeah, we had Voldemort in the PF pool.) A splendid time was had by all, and then, wonder of wonders, we announced that we would roughly do it again this coming week at Regis.

The fun never ends.

Bronx Funnies

2011-10-24T13:30:00.000-04:00

Bronx Funnies

2011-10-21T13:30:00.000-04:00

The novices are about to launch, etc.

2011-10-20T19:30:00.000-04:00

We TVFTed last night, for the first time since August. This abundance of infrequency is not from lack of trying. Early in the year there’s a lot of traveling and setups, and then this, that and the other thing arise, and the next thing you know, it’s the end of October. We should settle into a reasonable regularity going forward.

The abundance of infrequency with this blog, on the other hand, will probably continue. There are just so many hours in the day, and writing that other blog makes this one harder to fit in. I do try, though.

On the Sailor front, it looks as if we have 4 solid plebes and a couple more translucent ones. NPR is dithering between speech and debate and has asked me to choose for him, earning a predictably Yoda like response. I can’t tell people what’s right for them; high school is all about answering that question for yourself. At this week’s meeting the Cannibal stood up to the plate on some training (shades of the Panivore), which bodes well for the future. But the future remains clouded because the juniors were out on the bounding main visiting Ellis Island, my first thoughts on hearing which were that they were leaving the country and going back where they came from. With the abundance of their absence at this week's meeting, we were unable to discuss PF. Next week.

This weekend is the annual First-Timer’s event. I’ve gotten a couple of people complaining about the rules of the MHL, specifically in regards to the fact that a middle school debater is not a novice. Our experience has been that former middle schoolers are way beyond the average novice; after all, Robbie and HoraceMan won novice Scarsdale as 8th graders, and granted they were exceptional, they weren’t all that exceptional. People tell me that their middle schoolers only debated a little bit, though, and I am a little torn. We’ll have to talk about this among ourselves over the weekend. Maybe we can do better than an absolute elevation to JV. Anyhow, the point of first time debate is that it’s a person’s first time; in the past we’ve had a not-first division, and we’ll try that again this time and see if the numbers support it. We want everyone to come and have rounds, one way or another. The goal of the league is inclusiveness. Unfortunately, you can’t please everyone.

I have talked a bit about Big Jake last weekend, and there isn’t a lot to say. Each happy family is the same: a well run tournament mostly does all the things a tournament should do the same as every other well run tournament. The problem is that well run tournaments are not guaranteed at any level. But I have to admit that, if nothing else, the reliability of the software these days, combined with the experience of the folks behind the wheel (Bietz and I worked like telepaths—it was spooky) means that things will probably go okay at that end at least. As I said to O’C, running a tournament, i.e., being the tournament director, means you don’t do anything yourself but manage everybody else doing things. He’s gotten there now. And he’s appreciative, as a manager, of the roles everyone else plays. If he thanks the little people (like me) one more time, I’m going to have to poison his dragon roll. On the other hand, he did claim that the entire Bronx team (there’s 2837 novice LDers just for a start) have all come down with Big Bronxitis. There’s a price to pay, apparently.

Another Bronx Bites the Dust

2011-10-17T19:30:00.000-04:00

O’C wants me to review Big Jake, on the assumption that I’ll say all sorts of wonderful things about it and how he should be carried on the backs of forensicians everywhere and whatnot. Yeah, right. I mean, the tournament was fine and things went well, but if you were there you know that, and if you weren’t, you either don’t care or you do care for reasons I hesitate to guess at. What I know the VCA wants to hear is all the bad stuff.

I’m your man.

Consider this the list for improvements for next year:

1. There was no Sporcle in the tab room. This is like having no air in the space suit. The Jake authorities apparently think that Sporcle will ruin the youth of America. So what? Tab rooms need it. Jeesh.

2. There wasn’t a Starbucks within a hundred miles. You want me to be pleasant to you at eight o’clock in the morning without a triple venti nonfat latte? Dream on.

3. The conspiracy theory du jour from Bietz, that Steve Jobs died weeks ago but they were keeping him on ice because they didn’t have the iPhone 5 and wanted to distract everyone, was the worst conspiracy du jour in tab room history.

4. Ryan Hamilton snores. In the tab room. Regularly. How could I sleep with that racket going on?

5. This tournament cost me about $400. First, the ice cream from Mr. Softee was so softee that it ruined my sneakers and I had to order a new pair. Second, Bietz had this little portable Bluetooth speaker that I am now going to have to buy. I can’t afford this kind of tabbing. I am not made of money.

6. Carrying a walkie-talkie into the tab room is a hanging offense.

7. I am a firm believer that the tab room should have an open door policy. However, it should also lock from the inside, and the windows should be covered so that it looks like no one is home.

8. Debaters: Problems that arise in round one should be addressed some time before semis. Our Wayback Machine ain't what it used to be.

9. If O’C is going to eat a sandwich in the tab room, there should be sandwiches in the judges’ lounge when I look at what O’C is eating and decide I want one too and walk all the way down there—it's halfway to Brooklyn—to find nothing but pasta salads. Pasta salads, even good pasta salads, are not the sandwich that O’C was eating.

10. If you ask me what time it is, please do not do so when I am standing under a clock.

11. People who think Yo-Yo Ma is the antichrist know nothing about music. People who, after announcing that Yo-Yo Ma is the antichrist, make disparaging Yo-Yo Ma gestures for the rest of the day should be put to sleep, although while trying not to start snoring again.

12. If I invite you to a steak house, try not to be a vegetarian.

13. If I’m going to wear my ~~Mickey Mouse~~ Bronx Booster Pin, people ought to bow down as I walk past. I didn’t get one salaam all weekend.

14. Having Panivores at your tournament does not warrant a dozen trays of macaroni and cheese. It just encourages them.

As I say, other than that, it went fine.

Big Bronx Schedule

2011-10-14T15:00:00.000-04:00

(An oldie but a goodie.)

Friday
1:00-3:00 Registration
3:30 Opening Assembly
3:45 Award Ceremony for Past Performance -- featuring awards not presented last year that have been moldering ever since in the basement
4:00 Round 1 (all divisions)
6:00 Random Draw Award Ceremony – Achievement awards for all those advancing from Round 1
6:30 Dinner in cafeteria (featuring foods of all nations not presently suffering from a famine)
7:00 Dinner Award Ceremony – Achievements in both eating and cooking will be honored
8:00 Round 2 (all divisions)
10:00 Housing in auditorium

Saturday
7:30 Housing Award Ceremony (A) – Achievement in sleeping, showering and brushing of teeth (for those who traveled more than one hour to their housing)
8:00 Housing Award Ceremony (B) – Achievement in sleeping, showering and brushing of teeth (for those who traveled less than one hour to their housing)
8:30 Round 3 Flight A
9:15 Award Ceremony – Achievement in Round 3 Flight A
9:30 Round 3 Flight B
10:15 Award Ceremony – Achievement in Round 3 Flight B
10:30 Coffee break (featuring coffees of all nations that grow coffee humanely, if any)
11:00 Round 4
1:00 Lunch in cafeteria (featuring foods of all nations where the “Star Wars” films have grossed over a billion dollars)
1:30 Award Ceremony – Honoring those who put their napkins in their laps during the eating of lunch
2:00 Round 5
5:00 Non-Award Assembly – The auditorium is there, let’s all go into it for a few minutes and pretend something is happening. Anyone caught playing the piano at this assembly will be shot.
5:30 Early Bird Dinner in cafeteria (featuring foods of all nations that serve cheap evening meals to senior citizens when the rest of the world is still finishing off lunch)
6:00 Award Ceremony – Honoring those who respect Senior Citizens, unless the senior citizens are judging, in which case they throw parker house rolls at them
7:00 Bronx Achievement Award Ceremony – honoring those who have shown up at Big Jake more than just a couple of times, and whose registration checks haven’t bounced
8:00 Some Round (we’ve lost track)
10:00 Housing in the auditorium. Watch your step. There’s going to be a lot of awards scattered around and you don’t want to trip over any of them.

Sunday
8:00 Round 7 or so
10:00 Award Ceremony to honor anyone who actually shows up at this award ceremony
10:30 Announcement of advancing debaters
10:45 Award Ceremony for advancing debaters
11:00 Announcement of non-advancing debaters
11:15 Award Ceremony for non-advancing debaters
11:30 Service Award Ceremony for custodial staff, food vendors, Big Jake Parents’ Association, Big Jake Alumni Association, Big Jake Former Felons Association, etc
12:00 Elimination Rounds begin. (Please note: in the interest of moving things along quickly, awards for the elimination rounds will be given in the rounds. It’s not that we don’t like awards ceremonies, but we do not wish to go overboard.)

Bronx Funnies

2011-10-14T13:30:00.000-04:00

The Customer is Always Wrong

2011-10-13T19:30:00.001-04:00

I hate putting together my own tournament, but I love watching other people put together theirs. At the moment I’m in various stages of involvement with various events. I’m tabbing for O’C starting tomorrow. (It's a unique tournament: The awards ceremony begins Friday afternoon and ends around lunchtime on Sunday. Then there’s a single round of debate—the round is named after Japhod Beeblebrox, a Bronx Science alum, and is called the Davy Crockett—and everyone goes home.) So there’s that one. There’s the Tiggers, registration for which opens Saturday, in which I am acting in loco palmeris to help them with general coordination. Then there’s the MHL first-timers’ next weekend, followed by a bunch o’ single days, followed by Bump.

And here’s the thing: people are really a pain in the butt.

There’s the inevitable people who, rather than signing up for a tournament, reinvent the tournament. As CP roughly puts it, you know your tournament has arrived when somebody does this. I personally deleted three requests on tabroom.com to create the New York City Invitational, and there were more than that deleted by other folks. I’ve already deleted one for Princeton. You know, sometimes you really do have to RTFM. There is a big difference between registering for a tournament and creating a tournament. Jeesh.

Then there’s invitations. While tournaments operate to some extent under common law systems of obligation and procedure, each individual tournament has its quirks. All happy tournaments are alike; each unhappy tournament is unhappy in its own way, in other words. (Are we literary today or what?) The problem is, no one ever reads the invitation. RTFI? Tournaments have rules about signing up, payments, fines and the like. I’ve simplied it at Bump so that registration closes and you pay me the money, and if you screw up you put more money into the contribution box and we send it to someplace where life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death, using the respectability of charitable contribution to add to the shame of people screwing up. The thing is, when people screw up, they inevitably claim they didn't. I mean, they swear to God, the furies and Dick Cheney that they’re right and you’re wrong. Hence my poorbox. It’s hard to argue in the face of all those starving suckers.

I do hate to argue with people though. I am, shockingly, rather mellow most of the time. I do need to be pushed. But people have, on occasion, pushed me. I am especially ired by bad judges, which tend to always come from the same schools, and I have begun taking action beyond bloviation. This action is usually met with stunned demurrals or slinking into the sunset mutterings about that @*&$^% Menick without actually confronting me because, well, the customer is always wrong. When you’ve entered non-English speaking judges that you haven’t trained into a tournament, it’s not easy for them to tell me that they in fact do speak English and are trained when they can only do so in a pig latin gumbo of Prakrit and Esperanto**. Jeesh, as I am wont to say.

I can’t wait to see what arises at Big Jake. Mostly it tends to run well on the customer side because people have traveled a long way and spent a lot of money and tend to be professional debate programs, as compared to pikers and stumblers and ne’er-do-wells. And besides, Ryan Hamilton, the tournament's official greeter, enforcer, bouncer and Sporcle referee, will whip people into shape if they don’t watch their step. There are a lot of things that strike fear into the hearts of debate people, e.g, the wrath of JV. But nothing can hold a candle to the threat of exile to Hamiltonia. Look on his works, ye mighty, and despair!***

* I’ve been listening to a certain audiobook lately, read by Stephen Fry, that is a perfect 10.

** Unfortunately, the way I wrote this paragraph allows me no way to work in a joke about someone having a thick Esperanto accent. Too bad.

*** Have we set the allusion record this time out? Close, I’ll say. Damned close.

Bronx Funnies - Special Round Robin Edition!

2011-10-13T15:00:00.000-04:00

Bronx Funnies

2011-10-13T13:30:00.000-04:00

It's in their pipes and now they're smoking it

2011-10-12T19:30:00.000-04:00

So I walk into the meeting last night, and the room is packed with newbies. Instead of the three I was sort of getting used to, there were maybe a dozen fresh-faced little freshman staring up at me. Apparently there was a general recruitment for all the teams/clubs, and we got some people answering the call. Very nice. Of course, this meant that I had to start at the beginning again, which I really can’t do, but I managed to cover Debate Philosophy 101 in about 20 minutes, and then we went on from there. Whether any of these people will return is questionable, but I talked nonstop for 90 minutes and occasionally someone got one of the jokes and either they will come back or leave the district immediately for gentler shores. I’ll find out next week.

Okay and the Cannibal weren’t there for the PF announcement, but my entire slate of Juniors (two, count ‘em, two) were, and at least one of them was quite happy with this, he being of the persuasion of former LDers who weren’t all that excited about VLD. The plebes probably couldn’t make heads nor tails of any of it; the first-timers probably even less so. Whatever. I’m thinking that the best thing to do is get on the train for December rather than just the one time at most in November. This will allow me to continue concentrating on the Modest Novice and then Nov-Dec through October, which is only two more meetings, while setting up the infrastructure for PF (viz team research).

In private conversations I have had, no one is surprised by the switch. It’s not absolute, which helps. People can LD their little hearts out for four years if they are so inclined, as I’ve said. That’s a good thing, but only for some people. For other people, and I think a majority, PF will be a good thing. As I seek to spread the benefits of debate as I see them to the greatest number, it is, as they say on Vulcan, the logical thing to do.

Bronx Funnies

2011-10-12T13:30:00.000-04:00

A Big Change

2011-10-11T19:30:00.000-04:00

No, I am not quitting LD.

I am simply adding PF.

It’s like this:

Historically, there has always been a drop-off between sophomore and junior years, or wherever the line is drawn between varsity and whatever leads up to it. We have a fairly healthy JV experience regionally, although I have to plead guilty to removing most of the JV divisions from the colleges and replacing them with novice divisions. This was done to provide more experiences for novices, with the assumption that the other kids going to college tournaments ought to kick themselves up a notch and go varsity. Also, the JV divisions were confused amalgams of debaters with anywhere from one week to three years of experience, which made them a little less than competitive, or a little too competitive, depending on your point of view.

In any case, the drop-off in LD is not new. I’ve seen it since the beginning of my tenure at Sailorville. Whatever the nature of LD over the years, the jump to varsity has meant a much bigger commitment than some debaters were already making. The kid who wanted to derive benefits from debate without giving it the commitment of one’s total soul was left out. That kid could continue with the activity, but only to face a career of relentless losing and confusion. Today’s LD is probably more confusing than ever. At least in the past, while the material might be over one’s head, at least one could follow what was going on. Now speed makes that difficult, unless one has already sold one’s soul to do that speed oneself (no easy trick). As I have said many times, I have nothing against speed intrinsically, but I personally can’t follow it (although I used to, when I judged every week, although now it’s even faster so I’m not so sure I could do it if I tried). Those who believe that speed leads to only judges who can do speed who are, by definition, college students, could be right, but I don’t think that this is exclusively the case at any tournament except, maybe, TOC. Still, speed is almost everywhere, at every tournament, if not in every round.

Another aspect of today’s debate that requires that soul-selling is theory. Again, I have nothing against theory and see it as a useful tool against abusive positions, but given the prevalence of theory in rounds, one has to assume that virtually all debaters are being abusive in the first place, requiring these tools in almost every round to combat them. Also, of course, there are the sort of positions that I’m sure will be used in Nov-Dec, where the argument whether one is morally obligated to help those in need (which, I would suggest, is emphatically negative) will never touch on the moral obligations of helping others in need, but will simply argue the wording of the topic or the intrinsic unfairness of the topic. Again, there’s nothing wrong with arguing at that level, but to be honest, I don’t really care about it. It’s game-playing, and while I love playing games, I also love the content of resolutions, and I’m a little saddened to see the content relegated to a minor position in the discourse, if it holds any position at all. The content of LD is rich, but lately, it’s all but forgotten.

Mostly my concern is not with LD, but with student drop-off. My core belief—the reason I do this in the first place—is that forensics is good for students. All students. Anyone doing literally any forensics activity will be better off as a result. The benefits of debate are learning to write and research and think a certain way, and to speak on one’s feet. All good stuff. I don’t want to limit that good stuff to freshmen and sophomores, who then go off to become mall rats.

So, the program at Hen Hud will henceforth work thus. All novices will do LD all year. Starting second year, everyone will switch to PF, unless they wish to stay in LD. That is, PF will be the default position, and LD with be an option. Practically speaking, it’s the other way around now.

What will the results of this be? Well, I hope it will keep students longer. LD in the first year will train them on basic debate strategy: after all, debate is debate and an argument is an argument (and those members of the VCA who have followed my thoughts on PF know that I believe that a virtual LD structure underlying a PF case is a good idea). I will be able to work with students more thoroughly throughout their career because, honestly, lots of the specifics of LD are lost on me these days, and that is not true of PF. Also, I will be able to rope in more parents to help out. And I think that the average Sailor will have a better debate experience overall. They still can do LD if, for instance, they’re of the Panivorous persuasion—I’m not stopping anyone from doing it, and I will encourage those who want to. But most kids, facing the circuit mentality, tend to fade away, and I want to put a stop to that.

Again, this is nothing against LD. Nor have I ever had anything against PF that I’m suddenly changing my tune about. I love all forensics. I’m just changing focus a little bit.

And I don’t think I’m alone in this.

Bronx Funnies

2011-10-10T13:30:00.000-04:00

This seems so...2009

2011-10-08T17:27:00.001-04:00

Chomsky & Foucault

The new season

2011-10-07T19:30:00.000-04:00

So where are the Sailors this year?

Turnout at the first general meeting was spotty at best, although on the bright side most of the people there were potential debaters. Speecho-Americans, who operate on S-A time, started showing up at later meetings. Subsequently, after a little mix and match, we’ve got three debate plebes. This is about average for the course. One of them is already rebeling against his nickname, NPR, which is a hell of a lot better than some other nicknames I’ve come up with over the years. The other two have no nicknames. Come to think of it, the team is fairly free of this curse at the moment, although the Cannibal is arriving next Tuesday (I’m sure much to her chagrin, but as I always say, wipe that chagrin off your face!). Two of the three are on the listserver, the official measure of enlistment. NPR is on the fence. We’ll see. If he hits the road, I’ll give the nickname to someone else. I like the sound of it. It’s no Panivore or Wheat Germ or Termite, but it will do.

Last night we had the parent meeting, where first I tell everyone what we do, and second, I lock everyone in until I have the requisite number of volunteers to run Bump. By now I have my spiel down pretty well, including the timing of all the jokes, although I can never resist tossing in a few ad libs, and they worked pretty well. I mean, I’ve got some good material, people. I’m wasted on forensics. I always promise a half hour meeting, and it always comes in at exactly a half hour, and then maybe another half hour and some change. And we did get Bump parceled out. Food, housing, judges’ lounge. That’s their job.

My job is registration. This year we’ve about doubled PF, which really doesn’t surprise me. What surprises me is how long it’s been taking for PF to get any traction in the region. But maybe that’s ending. In any case, we’re roughly at waitlist in every division, and a hundred over in housing (so for most of those folks, it isn’t going to happen, although I’ve asked the parents to do their best, and last year they found 20 or so extra slots, to the thanks of a grateful debate nation). This is the point at which I keep an eye on it, looking for shenanigans (and in some cases, heading shenanigans off at the pass), worrying it as deadlines approach. The most important thing maybe be that I got Kathy S, the S-A coach, to promise to sell water this year in bottles bigger than one ounce. I mean, I like ripping off debate children as much as the next guy, but those bottles last year were ridiculous. On the other hand, Mrs. Panivore explained how, at housing, she gives kids bottles of water to bring with them to the school. Which, of course, undermines my ability to rip off debate children. We did have a talk about that. She’ll just hand them bagels in the future. Lord knows, the Panivore household has more bagels than it knows what to do with.

Bronx Funnies

2011-10-07T13:30:00.000-04:00

Bronx Funnies

2011-10-06T13:30:00.000-04:00

Star Wars, Episode Seven: The Rise of the MJP

2011-10-05T19:30:00.000-04:00

I’ve always assumed that the word eponym was named after a guy named Epo.

Also, at the DJ, which is jumping lately, there are three people we refer to as the two guys who look alike who don’t look alike, and the other guy who looks just like them.

Okay, I got that out of my system.

Let’s look at PJ’s comment on MJP (which, of course, is merely an M and a twist away from him, which he hasn’t seemed to notice):

I was writing about how one or two schools are totally off from whatever everyone else ranks. From my tab perspective, this is an annoyance, but my tab perspective is narrowly dedicated to making the tournament run smoothly. It is pragmatic and selfish, not philosophical.

I'm uncertain if it would be 'better' or 'worse', but if it is only 1 or 2 schools maybe they simply suffer from innumeracy.

No, I think it's very deliberate. It's the same schools all the time, and it definitely reflects an opinion of who should judge. Some schools, of course, don't rank at all, which reflects an opinion of ranking (except for the couple of cases where it reflects ineptness at getting the rankings in on time) or a young team without interest in the vicissitudes of judge paradigms.

I am mildly curious if I did rank everyone backwards, at least for the students I ranked for. If I did it wasn't for the purposes of mucking up the system. And if I didn't it wasn't for the purposes of NOT mucking up the system. I've been open about my MJP views. I am not morally opposed to it, so we do engage in it more as form of defense than anything else. I don't think that other people's ones are automatically our 1s.

PJ's team, as I recollect, was fairly mainstream. (Which I hope doesn't cause him to pull his hair out. Oh. Wait a minute on that one...)

I am slightly surprised the 1-1 or 3-3 issue does happen more often. A round judged between schools of differing philosophies SHOULD have differences in rankings, and that it does not occur actually troubles me. It means debate IS becoming more specialized. As the near-great Robert Heinlein observed, 'specialization is for insects.'

Well, yes, and that's the interesting nub. Why has the universe at large gone so deliberately in lockstep in this? I know we all don't agree on whether the sun rises in the east, so why do we agree on MJP so much?

I think that the folks who are opposed to it—and therefore dismiss it—because it does...something...to the judge pool might want to think again about this. I don't believe that the mechanism is hiding some intelligent design, that it must lead to some teleological predictable outcome (i.e., recent college grad judges who did well on the $ircuit). If everyone ranks according to their wants and needs, it would be quite different. The thing is, the ones doing the most ranking do want that special cadre of $ircuit judges. This pushes them up to 1 for a lot of people. People who don't rank get the other person's 1. End of lesson.

I will publicly say that I am prone to ranking recent graduates whom I don't personally know or have judged low, but that is because I have no particular reason to think that they are good judges until I see their ballots. I don't think that winning some TOC16 tournament means that one is a qualified judge, I actually tend to suspect that people who had to scrap just to get to the bid rounds -and did so often- might very well be better. will also low rank judges who have pedagogical practices I strongly disagree with (it is hard to take judges who like theory but won't vote on RVIs seriously, its kind of like taking Republicans seriously regarding criticisms about the national debt). I also tend to believe that debaters who did not flow much as competitors rarely magically become good flowers when judging. Debaters who debated for programs which don't do much of their own case writing I suspect are not that great at critical thinking, until they show otherwise.

And 'Oral critique' will usually be more than enough to get a '6' from me, or a '5' at best no matter how many tournaments one broke at has a HS debater. Though I may be open to visiting them in their capacity as a dental hygienist.

Which means, of course, that PJ is carefully choosing his judges based on his analysis of them. His analysis is conservative and, dare I say, smart. It is the kind of analysis that people who don't rank also ought to be doing.

In MJP at a big tournament, you'll get equals. My bet is that a large part of the field feels like PJ, but their scorn for this newfangled MJP thing, and therefore their refusal to use it, puts them in a position of being the most harmed by it. MJP, as I say, has no internal engine making it that way. The process of making MJP a machine to honor people who shouldn't be honored is propelled by people who refuse to honor someone else.

Let me put it another way. MJP is here to stay, at least for a while. Don't be put off by it. Use it. Use it your way. That's what it's all about.

Pups 11, Part 4

2011-09-30T19:30:00.000-04:00

Yale in the past has been something of a general reunion, with lots of conviviality and the like. This year, with everybody cast to the winds for all three days, there wasn't quite as much. So it goes.

Kaz visited us on Friday, since policy didn't start till the next day. She has a new PC, and spent most of her time not getting it to run TRPC. There's a system file that isn't in the default setup, and all I had was the XP version, and the minimal internet we had barred her from downloading it from the internet. Sigh. We did get the Pup printer to work, however, with my extra computer. I wonder whatever happened to that printer.

Speaking of printers, we used my Brudda to copy. Never again. There's so much copying, it gets so hot, it doesn't want to work normally anymore. Next year, somebody else's printer dedicated to copying.

JV was at my hotel, and we met after the festivities both nights for a late meal, so at least we had that. O'C was roaming around from venue to venue; he says he was putting out fires and chaperoning, but all I saw was his lugging around this sushi he had bought at lunch, and as the hours progressed and the heat and humidity rose, that sushi wasn't looking any too pretty. I really hope he didn't eat it. Forensics wouldn't be the same without him.

I never saw La Coin at all, although she texted me that the rumor was that UPenn wasn't happening. "They say" were at it again. UPenn will be happening no doubt better than ever this year (and it's the one left that CP will be at). I can't wait to meet They someday. I want to ask them where they get this stuff.

In fact, I saw the most people all weekend at the award ceremony, at which I arrived late because I was finishing up LD and then loading my car. By the time I got there the place was packed to the Puppish gills, so I just grabbed a GatorAde from an obliging concessionaire and sat on the fence (a place I hardly ever park) and chatted with one or the other of my fellow wizards. No big changes in the region this year. Abdul is in at Byram, but everyone knew that. Brother John is now district chair in NYC. He has my sympathies. O'C has a whole bunch of new assistants he's calling the Brain Trust (he says his team vetoed the Think Tank, possibly because they didn't like the competitive connotation of tanking); as with all O'C assistants, I wait a year before trying to remember their names. At my age, short-term info like that just takes up space, and I like to wait until they're Dunayed before giving any real mind to them.

And, of course, CP wasn't there at all. It turns out he got sick, and he claims that since he probably was going to get sick in any case, it was better than he didn't run things. And yes, things ran well without him, but we missed him. I mean, no one can replace Chris ~~Parker~~ Palmer.

Pups 11: Part Three, The Usual Suspects

2011-09-29T19:30:00.000-04:00

As always, representatives of the League of Usual Suspects visited us in the tabroom. The us in the tabroom included Abdul B, who got to see all of this first-hand, when he wasn’t jotting down notes on the music so that he could rush home and sample everything. (I let him take over the speakers on Sunday, and we switched roles. I want to hear more of that last stuff he was playing that sounded like Zeppelin…)

Fr’instance:

There was the person who got told they won by the judge but showed a loss on the results. They lost.

There was the ballot that no matter how we read it, we couldn’t figure it out. The judge wasn’t all that sure either.

There was the person who missed the round, and claimed that a lot of other people must have missed it too, and therefore they should all get byes. But they didn’t miss it in droves, and the byes were not forthcoming. The general rule is, there’s the next round right after the last round. Keep an eye on things; this is not the job of the tab room to make sure you get to your round. Yes, it would be nice if there were clearer advertisements for this, but with no cell, no wireless, and no copier, paying attention is the name of the game.

The late judges were always late. It’s always the same people. They have never shaken their butts, and they’re not going to start any time soon.

The judges who complained that they weren’t being used were heard from. They were being used, of course. With that many judges, there was about half a tournament off for most people. At other tournaments, these are the same folks who complain they’re judging too much. You can’t win.

We do have systems for seeing that the judge burdens are taken up fairly. At some tournaments I go through in advance and take people out of rounds at random (i.e., judge 1, no rd 1, judge 2, no rd 2, etc, going up and down the line, keeping the coverage equal with a little more in the presets and first break, where you need more highly ranked judges); you can do that when you have a real surfeit of judge talent. We also look occasionally to see if any extra judges have gotten way fewer rounds than everyone else, but like hurricanes in Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire, this hardly ever happens; TRPC is good about this.

This is the perception, though: Why do people think we’re actively doing something in tab either for or against them? The computer spits out the assignments, we check ‘em and print ‘em, and that’s it. In the case of MJP we look to see that the assignments are fair. If they’re not (say, a 1-2 or a 2-2 when everyone else has a 1-1), we take the first available 1-1 off the top of the stack and replace (and the stack isn’t alphabetical, so it’s not like you should change your name to Zeus if you want to judge less). The whole point of tabbing is neutrality. Much of what we’ve done lately with transparency and MJP and the like is make us even more neutral. It’s not as if we’re doing nothing in there other than listening to music and making wry remarks about our colleagues on the other side of the door (which we are doing, but that’s beside the point); we’re also spending hour upon hour entering data, and more importantly, not intervening any more than we hope the judges are intervening. We don’t want to leave any footprints on the tournament. We want fairness and accuracy. I’m pretty confident about the former, and ever hopeful of improving the latter, which is why we post results.

We are not out to get you. Really. We don’t even know who you are, when we’re tabbing. And that’s the God-honest truth.

Bronx Funnies

2011-09-29T13:51:00.001-04:00

Pups 11: Part Two, On Location

2011-09-28T19:30:00.000-04:00

The high school where we ran the LD prelims was roughly as big as the Pentagon, with the usual confusing room numbering that most high schools inflict on their visitors. When I arrived the only Pups around were concessionaires, but they tried to connect me with a tab room, and then more official Pups came around, and they did connect me with a tab room, but it was, sticking with the Pentagon analogy, over in the White House, so we found another tab room nearer to the table. We got thrown out of this room the next morning by the school that was having some sort of breakfast session, which was too bad, because this room had some wireless and some cell phone service and the other room’s wireless service laughed at you maniacally while the cell service only worked if you climbed up on a desk and stuck your head out the window. Also typical for high schools, but rough on a tournament. On the other hand, the building itself was solid and perfectly nice, with an agreeable principal who popped in now and then to see that we weren’t feeding the equipment to the homeless or whatever. Unfortunately, the room list that we had and the rooms that we had never were the same; lots of Pups did lots of running around trying to solve that, the end result being that, as rooms came and went like spirits in a Neil Gaiman novel, they just shunted the participants into the nearest space that would suffice. You could just put “Any Old Room” down as the venue half the time. That did slow things down a bit. Judges not picking up their ballots also slowed things down a bit. There weren’t too many of these, but even one in MJP means a whole lotta juggling and, occasionally, a diminution of the ranking of adjudicator. Nothing worse than trading in a 1 for a 3, I’d say. But that’s usually what happens when the judge doesn’t show. Blame the judge, not tab.

Speaking of which, there’s others you can blame. One or two schools notoriously rank everybody bass-ackwards. Your 1 is their 4, in other words. You end up meeting, if you’re lucky, at a 2, but more likely at a 3. So here’s a word to anyone who thinks they’re beating the system with clever pairings: you’re not. At a big tournament like Yale, 99% of the elim rounds got A+ judges. Literally the only ones who didn’t were the people who ranked “creatively.” If you don’t like ranking, then don’t do it. It won’t hurt you (you’ll get other people’s highly ranked judges, and more often than not agree with the choice). But at the point where you see the lists of good debaters from the last few years, and you start by ranking them at the bottom, your rounds just aren’t going to be that well adjudicated from anyone’s point of view. If you think you didn’t get your best choices for judges at Yale, again, don’t blame tab. It’s entirely your fault.

I mean what I’m saying here, about 99% of the prelims having been adjudicated by mutual 1s. I would press the button, close my eyes, and bingo: 1s all the way up and down the line. Occasionally a 2-2 would pop up, easily fixed to a 1-1. And those 3-3s would be there, unfixable. I think there was a single flight of the 6 where one team (one of these bubbleheads) got a 1-2 ranking. The rest was a walk in the park, at least until break, or when a judge pooped out on us.

Don't poop out on us. We know who you are. We will get our revenge!

Bronx Funnies

2011-09-28T13:30:00.000-04:00

Pups 11: Part One, The Early Years

2011-09-27T19:30:00.000-04:00

So, sez you, how was Yale?

Not bad, sez I.

Of course, it started during a monsoon. I’m beginning to associate Pups with meteorological Armageddon. Pupageddon? As always, the Clarion was on top of its game. I love dealing with a hotel that knows how to run a hotel; it’s amazing how rare that is. I had sent them a rooming list, and they had rooms for everybody on it. So, so nice.

I only had the People’s Champion and 3 sailors, and given the new location for LD, they were mostly with me, except as noted elsewhere. (Bear with me on this. It may take a day or two.) We drove to the campus and for a little while there was less than torrential downpour, and we had lunch and then went off in our own directions. The pups were still setting up when I got there. I like roaming in and standing there with a cup of coffee until they realize, wait a minute, it’s Menick. The pups running things this year were new to me, and I to them, but of course we had had many communications prior to the event. Registration was in LC, in a comfy little auditorium, and while they set up, I massaged the data. I wasn’t sure yet how to handle LD (one computer or two), so I set up the divisions separately. I was also unsure how many judges would port over from VLD to JVLD. Here’s the thing about that. There were a lot of judges in the VLD field who were perfectly fine but only in the middle of the rankings. I know these folks well, and would rank them As in JV in a second. So once I knew that I could, I pulled out a handful of varsity judges and seconded them to JV. For them, it was not necessarily great news, because in VLD they would have gotten easier rounds (the way downs and the way ups) and in JVLD they got nothing but bubble rounds where every decision counts. Those who complain about MJP’s effect on VLD should keep in mind its effect on other divisions.

I put myself into the line for registration first, just as a test case, and had some stuff for them to test (the bastids tried to overcharge me!) and it went well. Mike V was the registration grownup, a necessary position. Early on I realized that some people didn’t know where LD was (the info had changed many times) and I made sure that the table reminded folks. This ultimately didn’t matter too much because one school from the borough closest to Westchester got so caught in the bad weather that I spent three hours of the two hours I was on campus patting O’C on the virtual shoulder and telling him it was all right and not to worry. Of course, I would have dropped his team’s collective rump in a heartbeat if there were anything in it for me, but that’s just the nice kind of guy I am. In their favor, they had the Panivore on board (and I think the bus actually had a sign, Panivore On Board), and while I didn’t care about BSers, I wanted the P to judge until her brains fell out because, again, that’s just the nice kind of guy I am.

Anyhow, at 3:30 or so I packed up myself and the Sailors and we headed off to the high school.

To be continued…

Bronx Funnies

2011-09-27T13:30:00.000-04:00

Bronx Funnies

2011-09-26T14:41:00.002-04:00

Ave atque vale!

2011-09-21T19:30:00.000-04:00

So yesterday CP sent a message out to the forensics community, via the agency of an email blast to the attendees of Yale, explaining why he wasn’t running things behind the scene anymore for the Pups. I have talked here before about Chris’s contribution to the community overall. In addition to creating tabroom.com, which would have been enough, somehow he got involved in working with a bunch of Ivies on their tournaments. Longtime members of the VCA know well how I felt about colleges back in the day; I don’t know if I every used the phrase bloodsucking leeches, but I saw again and again how colleges were raiding the high school community, running tournaments against local schools on established weekends, using their name value to offer amateur hour events that were often embarrassing, and generally taking the money and running. Worse, many of them seemed to get TOC bids (which still bothers me: yeah, a bid should go to where the bid people are, but just because we’ve established a precedent doesn’t make it right—call me the Clarence Thomas of forensics). (Actually, please don’t call me the Clarence Thomas of forensics.) We’ve had that discussion before (and quite actively on TVFT).

Anyhow, then along came CP. I have no idea how he got started doing this, but the next thing you knew, he brought professional management to the Ivies. Their tab rooms knew what they were doing. Their organizers gained a sense of stability impossible to otherwise attain as students come and go. They learned to work with the community rather than solely for their own ends. It was an incredible transformation, and he deserves the credit for it.

Now he’s taking a less active role in these tournaments, because they do take an incredible amount of work, and there are just so many hours even in his day. Plus he believes, and I think rightly, that they are ready to go on their own. So I take this opportunity to thank him once again. Without Palmer, the landscape of high school forensics would be radically different, and nowhere near as good.

(Then again, if the Pups goes to hell in a hand basket this year, we now know who to blame, that *&^%$# CP!)

Bronx Funnies

2011-09-20T13:30:00.000-04:00

Counting down

2011-09-19T19:30:00.000-04:00

You’re out there spending your weekend however you spend your weekend, and you realize, this is it, see you again in April. This is an exaggeration (there’s a weekend off in October thanks to the Jewish holidays), but it’s mostly true.

The party’s over. Time to get down to business.

All the decks have been cleared Pup-wise. Now it’s just a matter of folks entering their judge prefs starting tomorrow. Tonight I’ll take a last look at the hireds and make sure they’re all where they’re supposed to be. Then I’ve got to haul out my equipment and make sure everything’s in working order, specifically the Brother printer and my old PC. I expect no problems, but one never knows. Then we pack it up and haul it up to New Haven, and let the games begin.

I’ve been happy with the lack of sad-soap stories and pleas for special treatment. I’m pretty much inured to both, but CP had promised them a-plenty. I mean, at this point I’ve told people no more hireds about as often as Obama has given in to the Republicans, so we’re covered on that. I would imagine some fall-out over putting VLD judges in JV rounds, but if you’re not particularly preferred, do you really want to sit around for three days? And on the opposite side, if you’re a good judge, shouldn’t you share your expertise with younger students? In my experience, the really good judges, be they former debaters or coaches, never gripe at judging younger students. They recognize it as an opportunity to both do some educating and, honestly, relax a tad. But, of course, I’m talking about the mensches here. The unmenschables are something else altogether. Maybe I’ll give them CP’s phone number.

I did spend some time sorting out geography. The new venue Saturday is quite close to the hotel, rendering trips to the campus sort of irrelevant. My goal has been to find a dinner solution near the hotel. So far, not so good. Oh, well. Tournaments are all about the food, aren’t they? (Unless you’re panivorous, in which case, who knows what tournaments are all about?)

Bronx Funnies

2011-09-19T13:30:00.000-04:00

Together Again!

2011-09-16T08:45:00.002-04:00

VLD and JVLD will be together at the Pups. This is a load off the proverbial mind. It'll be at a new location halfway between my hotel and the campus, which has its benefits. I thought I'd point out the change of venue, and the melding, right away, for any who might have read how it was otherwise and were acting accordingly.

It ain't over till it's over.

Slugs: The Other White Meat

2011-09-15T19:30:00.000-04:00

The joy of my life these days is wondering where O'C will check in next. Last night it was Gristedes supermarket. I was thrilled to hear it. Made my evening. Really.

I guess I'll turn off Foursquare notifications today.

We had the inaugural meeting last night, and have acquired a handful of prospective LDers. They didn't jump out the window while we were discussing animal rights, so I guess they'll mostly be back. It was hotter than Hades at the school, but we got through all the formalities. Let's see how many show up next week for the regular meeting, and how long it takes them to figure out how to sign up for tournaments.

Tonight I'll lay out all the MHL workshop stuff and get it out to people. That's mostly just rebroadcasting last year's agenda, but people need to know it's coming.

I find the animal rights topic interesting. I do maintain that it behooves the affirmative to come up with a definition of animal rights that includes having them for breakfast. This may not be essential, but being able to defend a version of animal rights that limits those rights (as all rights must be limited) makes sense to me. The idea that the affirmative must, in CX, claim to be a vegetarian, as a Sailor claimed last night, just strikes me as soooo novice. An animal has the right to certain treatment, but in the old circle of life, that treatment might include being served with mashed potatoes. Keep in mind that the topic says justice, not morality. Giving an animal its due, in other words. What are animals due? What do they deserve? What are their entitlements? That seems simple enough to me for an aff to dig in. On the other side, even walking in off the streets one immediately hinges on to the words requires and recognition for neg positions. Negative need not assert that animals have no rights, although neg can certainly assert different rights from the aff if that seems desirable. The thing is, those rights aren't persuasive enough when compared to human issues to require recognition.

All of which seems true to me. That is, there's real possibilities for real arguments on both sides. No doubt few if any people will argue that way for long, but hope springs eternal...

September Song

2011-09-14T19:30:00.000-04:00

I’ve finally accomplished something useful: I’ve outscored O’C in Foursquare. No doubt this is temporary, since he checks in every time he thinks about eating sushi, but I will now retire victorious, leaving him the field. I did not pay all that money for an iPhone to dedicate it to checking in to the local beaneries. I don’t care about where most people are, unless I’m looking for them. Then again, if all the people I’m avoiding would start checking in, I’d know where not to go. For that, I’d be getting my money’s worth out of the iPhone.

Remarkably enough, the biggest event at the Pups, going by teams and not people (because otherwise it would be PF), is Congress. (Although thanks to what’s been going on in Washington lately, I gather the NFL wants people to call it by its more meaningful name, Nyahh Nyahh Nyahh Debate.) Where have all these legislators come from, and why are they convening on New Haven? Maybe it has ever been thus and this is the first time I noticed it, but I find it curious.

Tomorrow I’ll get the registration set up for the MHL workshop. This is where we offer a free day of instruction to anyone who wants it. It’ll be at Bronx again, on 10/2. It’s unfortunate to have to have it on a Sunday, but every other day was a Jewish holiday. The calendar this fall is brutal, either with dueling tournaments or dueling religions. The last weekend of October, for instance, has more tournaments than O’C has Foursquare check-ins. I will be in my usual devoir, tabbing the CFL, while everyone else will be everywhere else. So it goes. Although it’s not as if I want the place to myself. Still, a one-dayer has the virtue of one’s own bed, and I can’t argue with that. In fact, I get three one-dayers in a row, right before Bump, although I do sleep in my own bed for that one too, only not very well. Which reminds me that I also need to alert the Sailors., Retd., of the proceedings.

Ah, September. Nothing much happening, but everything in the pot ready to simmer. Enjoy it while you can.

Bronx Funnies

2011-09-14T13:30:00.000-04:00

The Pup Thickens

2011-09-13T19:30:00.000-04:00

Flies are in the Puppish ointment, but that is to be expected. They lost the building we had last year for LD, so they’ve had to juggle some things. The biggest problem is attempting to share judges; JV and V will be in two different venues. This means we can’t be as generous with judge hires as we might have been otherwise. A bunch of folks who are still waiting for hires are going to be a little bummed, but so it goes. They can’t sell judges they don’t have, and quite honestly, they’ve got a good bunch, so no one can complain. I doubt if that will stop them, though. Our other problem is splitting up the tab staff. With Vaughan in Speecho-American land, other arrangements must be made. Oh, well.

At least the Sailor registration is intact. One thing about a small team is that you don’t have to move an entire army (or in our case, an entire navy). Three cars worth, altogether. Compared to some folks who have, maybe, 77 entries, including teams and excluding judges; they might as well hire a battleship for the weekend. The grass is always greener. I’m sure these battleship folks wish they had three cars worth, while I would love to have all that raw material to play with.

It occurred to me at some point yesterday that Bump registration will open in a couple of weeks. Jeesh. We had to postpone tonight’s inaugural until tomorrow; tonight is school open house. Why do I never check the calendar?

Bronx Funnies

2011-09-13T13:30:00.000-04:00

A Well-Oiled Machine

2011-09-12T19:30:00.000-04:00

The NYCFL moderators met this Saturday at Iona. It used to be that this was some sort of grand reunion at the beginning of the year, but in the age of Facebook and Twitter and the DiDeAd (we have our own listserver), I feel that we’ve barely been away. Kathy S and I talked a lot about the Sailors on our way down and back, and that was productive, but at the actual meeting, it was mostly, let’s do it again. I recall back in the day when this meeting would run on and on, but after a while you run out of things to discuss. There were a few new faces, but most of us are growing mold, and, well, there you are: a well-oiled machine. When it was over, JV and Kaz headed down to the VassaRR, which was at Collegiate. No doubt the Collegiate Alumni were meeting up in Poughkeepsie. If anyone doubted that the RR was at Collegiate, both O’C and CP kept checking in on Foursquare, presumably for no other reason than to annoy me. I had no choice but to retaliate. I am going to be the Mayor of the Taconic State Parkway in 3 days!

We’re still organizing who’s running what at the Pups. A few folks haven’t been heard from yet. And meanwhile we’re beginning to set up the Tiggers, with some defections here and there. That’s very early days, though. Pups, on the other hand, are breathing down the proverbial neck, and as far as I can tell, reality is just beginning to settle in and people are beginning to realize that they’re not going to be able to hire 50 judges and they’re paring down their entries. We could still use more LD judges, just to make things that much more swell. O’C is on the case, says he.

Tomorrow night is the inaugural Sailors meeting. I heard from the admiralty that there was whining about the pamphlet, because it had pictures of people who were no longer at the school. So, I wonder, we put on pix of people still at the school, for what? The pamphlet goes to people before they show up, to convince them to enlist. Does it matter which pictures of people they don’t know are on the page? It’s not like the pix are so old that everyone has a mullet or something. Speaking of which, if you Google Hen Hud for images (I was looking for the official Half Moon for O’C for the Bump medals), pretty much the first image you get is The People’s Champion. He obviously made his mark on the place.

Bronx Funnies

2011-09-12T13:30:00.000-04:00

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

2011-09-09T19:30:00.000-04:00

As the VCA knows, I have a Day Job. I don’t name it because then it gets swept by software trawlers and posted back to them, not that it matters all that much, but in my mind, the DJ and the Night Job should remain separate. I am loath to spend time on the latter when I should be working on the former, although often enough the former impinges on the latter. So it goes. It pays the bills, so it gets its due.

One of the things I’ve wanted to do for a long time on the DJ is get my products up on our website. I spent a lot of time demonstrating that I could provide regular content, and at the beginning of the summer we started putting it on the site. The trip from testing to live, which is still incomplete, has been fairly rocky. I haven’t changed what I’ve been doing, but our web design is done by outsiders, and I’ve been at the bottom of the list of their things to do, even though, frankly, I think what I’m doing is more interesting than anything else they’ve got. In essence, it’s a link blog, a batch of good content on books and entertainment, and the goal is to populate the marketing parts of the page with complementary business. I put together a system so that my staff can help feed me promising articles, plus I’ve been building up my own resources. My middle name is now RSS. The thing is, if you look at, say, 500 web pages a day, a hundred of them just repeat one another, another hundred are duller than dish water, the next hundred are about the Kardashians, another hundred are too hifalutin, and the last 95 cuss too much. Which means I get 5 good articles a day, with any luck. Often I get fewer, very occasionally more.

Starting with those good articles, I write about them, adding my own perspective, which is the only thing that makes them unique. As time goes on, I find myself adding more and more, but that’s probably not a bad thing, because it’s value added and therefore better content on its own. Additionally, I do birthday tributes when the spirit (and the birthday boy/girl) moves me enough. And I’ve got some ideas for other things, which I’ll do when we get to the fully live slash operational mode. (We’re half alive now. Like the Kardashians.)

The end result of this is over on the right, The Books and Entertainment Blog. I think that most folks will find it enjoyable, if you’re at all interested in books, movies, music, TV or theater. It tends to be more classic than contemporary, but there’s plenty of new enough stuff. It doesn’t talk down to people; I’ve long ago learned that everybody is smarter than you think, except for a couple of them, list provided on request. To really enjoy it (and it’s meant to be enjoyable, an editorial product on its own), you should put it into your own RSS feed or follow it on Twitter (@RD_Books_Ent). We haven’t done anything to promote it on Twitter; I just put it there because it picks up the entries automatically and ports them easily elsewhere, like the widget you see here.

The down side to this is that I have for all intents and purposes abandoned the Coachean Feed. It is, in a word, a victim of the number of hours in the day. I don’t know how many people will care about that; if I do see something worth passing along, I’ll just note it in the main body of CL.

How did you spend your summer vacation?

Bronx Funnies

2011-09-09T13:30:00.000-04:00

How To Stay on the Waitlist

2011-09-08T19:30:00.000-04:00

There comes a time in the life of every tournament where everybody starts asking for favors. Usually this means taking them off the waitlist. CP’s philosophy about this (and he can correct me if I’m misrepresenting him) was that the more you bothered him, the less likely he was to grant your requests. The thing is, getting off the waitlist really isn’t a popularity contest. At a big event like the Pups, there are schools that may not get teams in at all. Obviously they must be serviced first, in the order in which they arrived. Short of performing some special service for the tournament (exclusive of showing up), there is no other warranted claim to spots.

At a big tournament, this is fairly easy to maintain. It’s a tougher attitude to stick to at a small tournament, where the temptation is to let in as many people as will fit. This means that big programs get big allotments of slots, which means that your brackets start falling apart and your judge pool is all butter pecan (or whatever other flavor the big program comes in). The smaller tournament may make its money, but it risks ruining its tournament. Obviously, with about 100 or so VLDers at Bump, I can keep things relatively balanced. It’s harder for me in, say, VPF, which has maybe a field of around 30 or so. I could probably get 10 more teams in if I removed the school limit, but instead of a nice balanced (albeit small) event, I would have a skewed not much bigger event. And more money in the Sailor coffers. And fewer people thinking VPF at Bump is worth attending. Running a tournament requires both a long and short term perspective. Luckily for me, I’ve run so many Bumps that I don’t have to give it much thought anymore, even though I do tinker with things all the time. And with the Pups and their big field, I have worked with them long enough to know that maintaining the integrity of the tournament is their priority.

Two more weeks and we kick into gear. Those of you heading to Texas will be kicking in that much sooner. 2011-12 already. Happy New Year!

Bronx Funnies

2011-09-08T13:30:00.000-04:00

Nipping at the Pups

2011-09-07T19:30:00.000-04:00

When you have a lot of people attending a tournament, there’s a lot of hoo-ha. For the Pups, aside from my own entries, which include some waitlisted Speecho-Americans, all I’m really interested in is the LD side of things. At this point, it is all waitlist management. There is a practical, objective limit to the size of the fields (the number of rooms does not infinitely expand to meet the field), and there’s obvious reasons to limit the size of any one school’s entry (two or three big debate schools could take up the whole thing, given the opportunity). The goal of the Pups is diversity, and an inclination to draw from more than just the region. So one pulls schools in from far away if one can, although mostly one goes down the waitlist in the order of FIFO. If one were to play favorites, it would be fairly obvious, I think, and would not be to the benefit of the tournament. Similarly, one could presumably play non-favorites (“I never did like you, hence I’ll punish your students”) but I’m sure that would also be fairly obvious. If a school does have a bad history, though, and choices must be made, well… If your judges notoriously don’t show up, for instance, don’t be expecting any extra favors. Anyhow, at the moment it’s looking to me that maybe all the schools on the VLD waitlist will get slots, just because every day there’s a little movement as people drop. Whether anyone will get more than the allotted 4 slots is something else. JVLD seems more steady. The tournament is a mere two weekends away. We should be down to business after the end of this weekend, I would imagine. Plans will be in the works, and unless someone comes down with a severe case of the Creeping Crud, they’ll be there.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I sent out the recruitment marching orders to everyone yesterday. Play nice together and bring in as many sheep as possible, essentially. Despite all our knowledge that recruiting can be done, somehow, for the Sailors it remains pretty much of a genetic crapshoot. People in the district know about forensics, and somehow a few of them sign up for the team. No matter how aggressive or passive we are, same results. Maybe if I taught at the school it might be different, but who knows? In any case, the fingers are crossed. Give me 5 novices with staying power. Is that asking too much?

O’C’s latest check-in on Foursquare is that he got a haircut. How can Bronx Funnies possibly compete with the reality?

Bronx Funnies

2011-09-07T13:30:00.000-04:00

Excelsior, You Meathead!

2011-09-06T19:30:00.001-04:00

All right. This is how it is. One more Foursquare notice that O’C is standing on some subway platform somewhere and I’m cutting up his iPhone and serving it to him with wasabi, soy sauce and chopsticks dipped in motor oil. Jeesh!

Saturday I put in the order for the Bump trophies. They’ve moved the shop, and I drove awhile in the wilderness until I found it, and I thought that maybe this was some sort of sign, but no, there it was, finally. Meanwhile, O’C (if he lives) will be acquiring some medals for me, although he’s probably forgotten all about it in his Foursquare mania. Where’s the check-in at the trophy shop getting Bump medals, one might ask. He did come up for dinner last Friday along with Kt, and we did our best not to talk about 1) debate and 2) Disney for the entire evening. It wasn’t easy.

Mostly I’m thinking about other things than Bump at the moment. I met with the Sailors for the first time last night and tried to convince them that attending tournaments was sort of part and parcel of the debate experience. What do I know? We kicked a few animals around for a while. My feeling is that you need to prove that animals have rights, then that it is justice to give recognition to those rights. That is, start at the beginning. As for the neg, I’m not quite sure where one might jump on, that animals have no rights or that justice doesn’t warrant recognition of those rights or what. Here’s what I think. An aff needs a case that proves animal rights inclusive of (and independent of) carnivorous humanity; aff needs to prove that it’s okay to have a burger, in other words. That would indicate a case with a solid footing, even though, as I tried to explain to the Sailors, I would never actually run anything about vegetarianism (probably on either side). How they’ll take what I was saying remains to be seen. A lot depends on where their research takes them.

Meanwhile, there’s the Pups coming up, there’s Montiwegia, there’s the MHL workshop, and then there’s Jake. Mostly I’m concentrating on Pups at the moment—cleaning up judge requests while O’C acquires some more judges, monitoring the LD waitlists, that sort of thing. We just began organizing for the workshop. Once the season begins, it begins with a vengeance.

Bronx Funnies

2011-09-06T13:30:00.001-04:00

Sept-Oct

2011-09-05T12:05:00.001-04:00

"There are few careers available to pigs that don't involve being eaten." -- Roger Ebert

Remember when LD used to be about philosophy?

2011-09-04T21:19:00.002-04:00

Download Free Courses from Famous Philosophers: From Bertrand Russell to Michel Foucault

Stick with me, kid, and I'll show you the world.

We're back and we're mad!

2011-08-31T19:30:00.000-04:00

So, sez you, what up wit’ all dis stuff?

I don’t like to publicize too much when my house is empty, filled with treasures that people like you can come in and purloin. I mean, I’ve seen you eyeing the Menick silver with evil intent. It would be imprudent for me to start broadcasting, Hey, come on over, the Menick silver is yours for the taking. So, I keep my travels to myself, for the most part, except for debate trips, during which the chez is under firm control by family members and cats left behind fully armed and dangerous.

Anyhow, last week we were in Toronto, which is a very nice city that I recommend to those who find themselves looking for a very nice city populated with Canadians. Good eats, good entertainments, all that good stuff that makes a city worth visiting. And then #(*&$% Irene reared her ugly head, and we said to ourselves, Selves, we might want to head on home early. We had planned a Sunday flight. Yeah, right. So, how about Saturday on Amtrak? No problem. We booked it, bought a pile of magazines, charged up the electronics, and then, on rising at the c of d on Saturday, lo and behold, an email from Amtrakia telling us that the train is canceled. Check over on Delta, and of course, the Sunday flight was canceled, but they’ve rebooked us for Monday on the same flight early in the day. Okay, another couple of days in Toronto. Until Delta canceled us again and moved us to late in the day Tuesday. Fortunately the hotel we were staying at was sympathetic, so it’s not as if we suffered physically, although mentally, who needs it? Anyhow, we did finally ship home last night and found the chez mostly intact and Tik (pronounced teek) in one piece, although there was some basement flooding and the MHL printer may be hors de combat. The cable was out, so no surfing or whatnot there, but some people don’t have any power at all so I shouldn’t complain.

Anyhow, all of this threw me back a lot, so for the rest of the week, I’m afraid I’ll be maintaining bloggian and Bronxian funny silence. But we’ll get ‘em next week, sport. Count on it.

By the way, no matter how much I looked in Toronto, I could not find a t-shirt that read: "Canada — America's Hat." I think they're missing a real good opportunity there.

Out for the count

2011-08-28T11:45:00.001-04:00

Irene has not been good to us. No harm, but no internet. Will resume some day.

Off for a week

2011-08-19T08:42:00.001-04:00

We're going off line for a week. Entertain yourself for a while. There is a new TVFT if you get desperate, but nobody's ever that desperate...

Bronx Funnies

2011-08-18T13:30:00.000-04:00

Don't clean your glasses. It's me, not you.

2011-08-17T19:30:00.000-04:00

I'm not quite sure why I disparage Speecho-Americans' response rate to messages from on high. (Note: On high = me.) Debaters aren't much better. I'm trying to assemble a quorum for a little chez on the new topic, but the responses range from nil to spam to no to demurrals from people I didn't even know were on the team. Obviously, when Menick cracks the whip, the whip gets cracked. Nothing else happens, though. You'd think I'd know better by now.

We're shooting for the season opener of TVFT tomorrow night. I forget who cracked the whip on this one. Bietz, I think. He's obviously rarin' to go on the new topic. I hope he doesn't propose the sushi affirmative.

For reasons too complicated (or too inane) to explain, I've redone the blog template. Most of it's still here, it just looks a little different. Bear with me as I punch it up a bit. I mean, before, everything looked so... 2010...

Bronx Funnies

2011-08-17T13:30:00.000-04:00

Some animals are more equal than others

2011-08-16T19:30:00.000-04:00

So the new topic is out. I like the subject area, but I'll a little wary of the phrasing.

First of all, normally we look at justice as fairly resolving conflicting claims. Now even if I grant that animals might have legitimate claims, I can't cover this in a blanket statement, and I wonder how much we'll end up arguing about what we're arguing about rather than simply arguing it.

Animals might have a legitimate claim on not suffering needlessly. I mean, it's wrong on all counts to torture cats, for instance, because it inflicts unwarranted pain. Do mosquitoes have a similarly legitimate claim? Maybe. The pain we inflict on mosquitoes is warranted by the pain they inflict on us. Maybe we can warrant safe passage to any living creature that provides safe passage to us. Quid pro quo in the animal world. That's relatively easy, a reciprocal live-and-let-live approach.

Where we would mostly want to suggest that animals have some rights is where their legitimate concerns outweigh ours. Or maybe more to the point, animal rights would mean that if their legitimate concerns outweigh ours, they should be granted. There's a difference. Areas like medical testing, for instance, theoretically posits the rights of animals versus the rights of humans. Should humans have a prior claim? Since it's humans that are doing the claiming, that seems a little unfair. What greater right does a human have to live than, say, a gorilla? I ask this not rhetorically, because if you can't answer it, you can't argue this resolution. I wouldn't go about blinding rabbits so that Madame will smell sweeter, but to go about killing non-humans so that humans can live? Different question.

Animal rights wouldn't necessarily preclude human omnivorousness, would it? An animal might have the right to be treated humanely (note the root of that word) but still get eaten with cherry sauce. The distinction, again, is meaningful for those debating this topic.

Still, I have trouble drawing a line from the word justice to the concept of animal rights because animal is a big, complicated mental construct. It's hard to weigh. Me versus you is a couple of schmegeggies with conflicting claims, and probably we can do a cost-benefit analysis of our dispute and come to terms on that basis. It's way hard to CBA you versus a donkey. (Me versus a donkey, on the other hand, is a no-brainer.) I like a cleaner field for discussions of justice, myself.

This will be fun to talk about, though. It is a good subject. I worry that bad debaters will make a hash out of it, getting so lost in definitions and meaningless distinctions that heads will burst, but bad debaters do that no matter what the topic. For the rest of us, it's a topic with some ~~meat~~ vegetables on its ~~bones~~ stalks.

Bronx Funnies

2011-08-16T13:30:00.000-04:00

Bronx Funnies

2011-08-15T13:30:00.000-04:00

Enjoy it!

2011-08-12T19:30:00.000-04:00

This is the last weekend of the year. That is, the last weekend before there's a new resolution. All of a sudden, LDers across the country will start researching like crazy, which 90% of the time means going through old cases and finding stuff that marginally applies to the new rez and then throwing it into fifth gear and driving like crazy. Some people will look back at all that money they spent on camp and wonder how come they never covered this topic, while others will laugh Satanically and do the happy dance thinking that the cases they wrote at camp will somehow have value in the real world other than in that first random round against the novice with the case written in crayon on the back of a McDonalds Happy Meal box.

So, enjoy the weekend. I'm having folks over tomorrow, so I'll be cooking up a storm and then watching these people devour it all like pigs at the trough. All that work. I could have ordered a mega-bucket of KFC and spent all that time watching Howard the Duck. But not me. I'd rather work than watch Howard the Duck. Hell, who wouldn't? Other than him, I mean.

It's been a nice summer. Time to move on, though. And I admit it. I'm happy to see it. Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Bronx Funnies

2011-08-12T13:30:00.000-04:00

Bronx Funnies

2011-08-11T13:30:00.000-04:00

Pups and cats

2011-08-10T19:30:00.000-04:00

I have pretty much abandoned the Coachean Feed, at least for a while. This is because I’m working on a feed for the DJ, and since they pay me for that one, it takes priority. I’m scanning about a thousand pages a day (and finding about five good ones), and that has sucked up all of my internet time. So it goes. I like the CF, both in concept and execution, even though I don’t think many others ever paid it much attention. I had always hoped that it might become some sort of group effort, but no one has ever sallied forth and volunteered, so there you are. Of course, at the moment the DJ blog that I’m trying to feed is totally kerplewie (don’t ask), so there you are there, too.

You’re a lot of places today.

I’m finalizing the team entry for the Pups, meanwhile. CP has cleared off the first rash of waitlisters, but DI seems to be popular beyond its years and I’ve still got a few there that I’ll hope get pushed. Worst case scenario, I can switch a few names on my end, bowing to seniority. I mean, you can’t let your newbies have slots that should go to your seasoned vets, eh?

Of course, I can talk freely here about the Sailor Speecho-Americans because none of them know this blog exists, with the probable exception of Panivore Junior. Getting them signed up for tournaments is always entertaining. Herding cats? I’ve had cats, and they come when you call them and fetch and, in some cases, do pretty good term papers on Proust. Try to get a Speecho-American to come or fetch. Can’t be done. I’d rather a team of cats any day.

Montwegian registration is also open, and I’ve entered the odd name. I always enjoy registering for my hotel room up there in God’s country. Trying to get a room for one night is like trying to herd Speecho-Americans. They just can’t understand why anyone would stay just one night. I mean, it’s Monticello. It’s like Hen Hudville when it comes to tourism. My guess is that they’re simply surprised that anyone wants to stay at all, rather than that someone can absorb all the many local attractions in so short a visit. I think O’C is taking that weekend off to go leaf peeping with the assembled O’Cruzian clan. Maybe they’ll end up in Monticello by choice. No doubt staying two or three days. I always recommend the local Chinese restaurant, mostly because the one time I went there the special of the day was corned beef and cabbage. Make that four or five days…

Bronx Funnies

2011-08-10T13:30:00.002-04:00

Bronx Funnies

2011-08-09T13:30:00.001-04:00

Lost weekend

2011-08-08T19:30:00.000-04:00

Somehow this weekend went to hell in a hand basket. It was supposed to start with Friday in the city and dinner with Kt and O'C, and that didn't happen, and then Saturday I had to clean out the basement—oh joy, oh rapture—and then Sunday we canceled golf because of rain that didn't happen (although it was 135% humidity out there, so maybe that wasn't such a bad idea after all) which meant I got to update the Bump invite just about completely. I repeat: Oh joy, oh rapture.

I passed the invite along to O'C for his input. He had done the same to me with the Bronx invite, but by the time I got around to reading it (about five minutes after he asked me about it) he had already posted it. The man has the patience of a saint, so to speak. PJ has commented on the Yes Virginia round, and I appreciate his concerns, but the benefits of half an hour aren't that many, really, on a trip of four hours. If everyone is out by 5 they're home by 9, which is the goal, unless you're winning the damned thing, in which case you'll be happy to stay until we throw you out. O'C, of course, thinks eliminating the Yes Virginia round is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but he's a saint, and there you are.

Ryan Miller sent me a note that they are doing their York County August workshop, "August 18-21, with Sept/Oct case workup and modules on ballot theory & kritiks, economic reasoning, and the meaning of justice." Ryan is rmm4pi8@gmail.com if you're interested. When he tells you the meaning of justice, please email it to me. I've been waiting to hear...

It turns out that you can play iPad Scrabble with Facebook friends. I like that, except that O'C is wiping the floor with me. As soon as he uses a word that I've heard of, I'll have him, though. He credits his non-English-speaking students with his great success at the game. [Sigh...]

Bronx Funnies

2011-08-08T13:30:00.000-04:00

Bronx Funnies

2011-08-05T13:30:00.001-04:00