Let’s look at the rest of them. I’m not sure how the NFL decides the order in which to list them, but I’m just following them.
Resolved: On balance, the privatization of civil services serves the public interest.
What? I have little or no idea what this one is supposed to be about. Presumably it’s meant to be a thrust at limiting government, but civil services is an awfully broad phrase, and to be honest, I don’t recall anyone lately saying, Gosh darn it, I wish someone would privatize them thar civil services. Although guess the government is cheaper if there’s less of it. Whatever. As a debate topic, this would be all over the map. By the time any agreement about it comes along, it will be over. As for underlying value, anything the government does is civil service, isn’t it? Road building. The FDA. The DMV. You name it. Where’s the core moral/ethic business? Where’s the philosophy? There’s a reason Ron Paul isn’t the designated nominee…
Rating: 0
Resolved: On balance, labor unions in the United States are beneficial.
This is a perfectly fine resolution for Public Forum. For LD, there’s very little real philosophical meat. It’s a question of politics and business and economics, not of morals or ethics. It can certainly be argued, but why? The word “are” at least limits it to present day. I can’t wait to watch them debate this one in Wisconsin.
Rating: 2
Resolved: The United States ought to guarantee universal health care for its citizens.
Again, a fine resolution for PF with absolutely no LD underpinnings. It’s your politics vs my politics, and here I’ll agree with George Washington that parties just don’t work well.
Rating: 2
Resolved: Oppressive government is more desirable than no government.
I can hear the winds of the good old days blowing down the highway. This was a classic in its day, on so many counts. It’s about the old-time social contract stuff that used to be the meat and potatoes of LD, plus since both sides are bad, you have to run the less bad. On top of that, the advocacy is clear: either you’re one side or the other. 20 years ago this was the most beloved topic of all time. It was a serious contender for the northeast Modest Novice topic; we went with civil disobedience mostly because of the two negatives of this one, which seemed a little sophisticated for newbies. If you want to push LD back a generation or two, vote for this one for Jan-Feb. In the best of all possible worlds, this would be the NatNats topic.
Rating: Depends on the months. 8 for Sept-Oct or Nov-Dec, 6 for Jan-Feb (from a $ircuit bias), 10 for Mar-Apr or NatNats.
Resolved: Rehabilitation ought to be valued above retribution in the United States criminal justice system.
Another classic. This question is ever argued and never settled, and it forces one to draw on canonical texts and thinking. Downside is the interpretation on the neg that rehab ought to be valued the same, which is a Mickey Mouse approach if you ask me, but it will be popular nowadays no doubt, because it’s not illegit, just weak. (When did we arrive in a world where the best defense is not an offense but instead a bland demurral from the other guy's offense?) I don’t like this for newbies because it’s a bit off the mainstream of old-fashioned political philosophy, but it wouldn’t hurt them. Again, putting this in Jan-Feb would make $ircuit heads spin like crazy. Still, I like this topic, and have every other time we’ve debated it.
Rating: 7
So, overall, not a bad list, yet again. A couple of stinkers, no doubt one of which will get through, some oldies but goodies, and some nice new ideas. That's pretty good considering the ridiculous method with which NFL comes up with these things. We've talked about it often on TVFT, and no one inventing a system would invent this system. But the folks on the committee, nevertheless, do a great job under the circumstances. Now it's all up to the voters.
.
Showing posts with label Modest Novice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Modest Novice. Show all posts
Friday, June 22, 2012
Monday, November 07, 2011
Oh, yeah. We start reading Nietzsche in pre-school.
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?
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?
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Modest Novice in practice
So last night MB and O’C and I recorded a podcast. I have to admit I haven’t listened to it yet, because first it needs to be assembled. It was fun doing it, though. I’ll post details—and the podcast—in a day or two (at most).
Meanwhile, whatever happened to the Modest Novice? Well, here’s my experiences so far. (I'll be cross-posting this over at ModNov.org.)
I started my novices this year with analysis of rights and the social contract. This is obviously elementary stuff one would want to start them with (although this year’s Sept-Oct of high school exit exams hardly seems inclusive of such discussion). Rights is a cornerstone of LD (and western philosophy); protecting those rights is theoretically the goal of society; hence the social contract. What does that all mean? That was our starting point.
Recommended reading: John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government.
Next session we move on to a different subject, morality. Morality, the determination of right and wrong, has many facets. I begin by asking the students if there is such a thing as right and wrong, and how they distinguish between the two. When I covered this at the MHLW, there was strong feeling that religion was the source of morality (true enough), but the problem is that we can’t draw on a religious answer to a secular question. We need an understanding of morality that we can use in a debate round.
The discussion of R/W usually is pretty lively, because students have firm belief in their ability to distinguish between the two. With luck, by the end of the session, you will have shaken that firm belief. In fact, revving up the trolley examples (which are, after all, classic tools of morality evaluation and not just the bad taste in many mouths left over from last year’s Sept-Oct) is not a bad idea at all.
In my morality discussion I usually go first for the idea of deontology versus consequentialism. We can say that an action is either right or wrong because of the action itself, or the results of the action. Simple enough. A deontological test is hard to explain (Kant’s categorical imperative) whereas the numbers of utility are easily understood. This leads us naturally into the question of whether there is, indeed, an objective right and wrong. If not, then we are in a relativistic, subjective universe. If so, all we have to do is find it.
So, a session on rights and SC, then a session on Morality. (Or as many sessions as it takes; I only meet with students once a week.)
The next step in ModNov, I think, is to address the topic head-on, a brainstorming session for the novices (and interested members of the team, given that many will be judging this topic). We need to understand civil disobedience. It is breaking the law. It is not inherently nonviolent nor inherently promotional, although these are the normal connotations; these should be defined and clear at the outset of a case. We need to understand that, in a democracy, we make the laws ourselves. That is what a democracy is (and some understanding of the General Will is important here). We are breaking the laws that we made, in other words. And why? Because of a moral view of that law (the morally justified). The brainstorming should include things like the history of CD from Gandhi on (or Thoreau on), Civil Rights in the US, etc.
Recommended (if not required) reading: Thoreau.
Then we need to brainstorm arguments. Why is the aff right? Why is the neg right? Do that for a while, then go home and write a case, and I’ll see you at the first tournament.
Meanwhile, whatever happened to the Modest Novice? Well, here’s my experiences so far. (I'll be cross-posting this over at ModNov.org.)
I started my novices this year with analysis of rights and the social contract. This is obviously elementary stuff one would want to start them with (although this year’s Sept-Oct of high school exit exams hardly seems inclusive of such discussion). Rights is a cornerstone of LD (and western philosophy); protecting those rights is theoretically the goal of society; hence the social contract. What does that all mean? That was our starting point.
Recommended reading: John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government.
Next session we move on to a different subject, morality. Morality, the determination of right and wrong, has many facets. I begin by asking the students if there is such a thing as right and wrong, and how they distinguish between the two. When I covered this at the MHLW, there was strong feeling that religion was the source of morality (true enough), but the problem is that we can’t draw on a religious answer to a secular question. We need an understanding of morality that we can use in a debate round.
The discussion of R/W usually is pretty lively, because students have firm belief in their ability to distinguish between the two. With luck, by the end of the session, you will have shaken that firm belief. In fact, revving up the trolley examples (which are, after all, classic tools of morality evaluation and not just the bad taste in many mouths left over from last year’s Sept-Oct) is not a bad idea at all.
In my morality discussion I usually go first for the idea of deontology versus consequentialism. We can say that an action is either right or wrong because of the action itself, or the results of the action. Simple enough. A deontological test is hard to explain (Kant’s categorical imperative) whereas the numbers of utility are easily understood. This leads us naturally into the question of whether there is, indeed, an objective right and wrong. If not, then we are in a relativistic, subjective universe. If so, all we have to do is find it.
So, a session on rights and SC, then a session on Morality. (Or as many sessions as it takes; I only meet with students once a week.)
The next step in ModNov, I think, is to address the topic head-on, a brainstorming session for the novices (and interested members of the team, given that many will be judging this topic). We need to understand civil disobedience. It is breaking the law. It is not inherently nonviolent nor inherently promotional, although these are the normal connotations; these should be defined and clear at the outset of a case. We need to understand that, in a democracy, we make the laws ourselves. That is what a democracy is (and some understanding of the General Will is important here). We are breaking the laws that we made, in other words. And why? Because of a moral view of that law (the morally justified). The brainstorming should include things like the history of CD from Gandhi on (or Thoreau on), Civil Rights in the US, etc.
Recommended (if not required) reading: Thoreau.
Then we need to brainstorm arguments. Why is the aff right? Why is the neg right? Do that for a while, then go home and write a case, and I’ll see you at the first tournament.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The Vatican endorses ModNov (sort of)
The other thing that happened last Saturday (MHLW being the original other) was the meeting of the NYCFL. We held this at Scientific Bronx School of High Dudgeon as well, because so many of us needed to be at both.
NYCFL is a straightforward organization that is run extremely well by Catholic Charlie, who is one of those people who is good at running things. A lot of forensics is run by people who are not of that persuasion, but with the City Cats, this is not the case. Catholic Charlie has an agenda, keeps us focused, runs pleasant tournaments and is generally amiable. What more could you ask?
A couple of things of note were discussed at the meeting. For our purposes, the agreement was reached to continue four-round tournaments, but notably with lunch breaks, so that the Policians wouldn’t be passing out from starvation in the middle of the afternoon. We did allow that some other problem on the ground might throw us off (e.g., some sort of unforeseen delay kicking us in the butt in the middle of an event), and we will use our noggins to decide as we progress in a given contest if there are any issues. Makes sense to me. Also, we’re waiting to hear where the 10/31 contest will be. Kaz will be up at Manchester Under the Sea and Sabrina will be in a mosh pit somewhere, so we won’t have policy after all. But we will have everything else with a debate flavor to it.
We also discussed ModNov, of course, officially instituting it for the league. It will also be used in the Manhattan Debate League. The train has left the station, ladies and gentlemen. This is sooooo good.
We had invited the coaches at the MHLW to visit the NYCFL meeting. Some of them were there for the first time, and I hope they will officially join us at our events. You can’t have too many debate tournaments, and with MHL, CFL and general invitationals spanning all the levels of competition, the northeast at the moment is jam-packed with contests in the best way possible. Something for everybody! Yes!
It’s nice when things are working well. It really is. What is best about all of this is the open communication. When I started doing this activity, it was hard to find things out. The internet was young, and so was I. (Well, all right, the internet was young. I was already older than God.) Now, not only do we have online registrations and email and Twitter and listservers and whatnot, but we actually use them! I feel that there has never been a stronger sense of community among the coaches than there is now. Not that we all love each other and want to have each other’s babies, but we talk together and plan together and disagree with civility, which is the way it should be. Maybe we are finally learning to practice what we so obviously preach.
I have a feeling this is going to be a most fun season!
(And I’m sorry for this outburst of joy and rapture, and promise to return to biliousness and general disagreeability tomorrow.)
NYCFL is a straightforward organization that is run extremely well by Catholic Charlie, who is one of those people who is good at running things. A lot of forensics is run by people who are not of that persuasion, but with the City Cats, this is not the case. Catholic Charlie has an agenda, keeps us focused, runs pleasant tournaments and is generally amiable. What more could you ask?
A couple of things of note were discussed at the meeting. For our purposes, the agreement was reached to continue four-round tournaments, but notably with lunch breaks, so that the Policians wouldn’t be passing out from starvation in the middle of the afternoon. We did allow that some other problem on the ground might throw us off (e.g., some sort of unforeseen delay kicking us in the butt in the middle of an event), and we will use our noggins to decide as we progress in a given contest if there are any issues. Makes sense to me. Also, we’re waiting to hear where the 10/31 contest will be. Kaz will be up at Manchester Under the Sea and Sabrina will be in a mosh pit somewhere, so we won’t have policy after all. But we will have everything else with a debate flavor to it.
We also discussed ModNov, of course, officially instituting it for the league. It will also be used in the Manhattan Debate League. The train has left the station, ladies and gentlemen. This is sooooo good.
We had invited the coaches at the MHLW to visit the NYCFL meeting. Some of them were there for the first time, and I hope they will officially join us at our events. You can’t have too many debate tournaments, and with MHL, CFL and general invitationals spanning all the levels of competition, the northeast at the moment is jam-packed with contests in the best way possible. Something for everybody! Yes!
It’s nice when things are working well. It really is. What is best about all of this is the open communication. When I started doing this activity, it was hard to find things out. The internet was young, and so was I. (Well, all right, the internet was young. I was already older than God.) Now, not only do we have online registrations and email and Twitter and listservers and whatnot, but we actually use them! I feel that there has never been a stronger sense of community among the coaches than there is now. Not that we all love each other and want to have each other’s babies, but we talk together and plan together and disagree with civility, which is the way it should be. Maybe we are finally learning to practice what we so obviously preach.
I have a feeling this is going to be a most fun season!
(And I’m sorry for this outburst of joy and rapture, and promise to return to biliousness and general disagreeability tomorrow.)
Monday, September 14, 2009
We have ignition. We have liftoff. Yahoo!
Wow. Or, if you’re reading this upside down, Mom.
We held the first (and far from last) MHL Workshop on Saturday. This stemmed from discussion on the NDCA listserver about costs and whatnot, and I foolishly jumped in and said, okay, we’ll throw a free one-day institute in the Fall for younger students. Sure. Why not? How hard can it be?
Last spring we quickly laid down a broad outline of modules. Then Kaz and JV and O’C and I sat down one hot summer night at the chez and polished it up. Then O’C went off to get instructors. As the VCA knows, I was a little wary of how long it was taking him to do this, but the man ultimately came through with some spectacular folks who did an amazing job for no other reason than that they’re good people. Cruz will shortly list them over on VBD (which I will call for once by its correct name, so that you know what I’m talking about and you go check it out). He’ll also post some pictures (of course).
We had attendees of every persuasion despite the earliness of the event. (We’ll do it later next year.) There were new coaches, parents, novices, JV, Pfffters, Policians, whatever. The hallways between modules were abuzz with people on their cell phones (and in real life communication) talking about the topics and whatnot. Engagement was full-on. Imagine what that would have been like a couple of weeks later!
I participated in the new coaches’ discussion, answering questions and helping folks out with stuff, and then I did second chair on PF case-writing with CP. He’s got a solid scholarly approach to content, so I took the position of filling up the blank sheet of paper, the one where I tell people I’m an editor so I know about writing. (I don’t tell them I’m a blogger because then they wouldn’t believe the claim that I know about writing.) What I enjoyed most, though, was the last session, brainstorming ModNov with these absolutely raw newbies. Sacre bleu (as no one in France has ever said, other than in the comic book “Scrooge McDuck on the Riviera”)! This was late in the day, and these people wouldn’t shut up! We covered all sorts of stuff at a very broad level, like right and wrong and rights in general and civil rights and what-have-you, and it was exciting. I can’t wait to do it with some Sailors. There is now no doubt in my mind that ModNov was a good idea, and that this was a good topic to choose. School tests, while relevant to students, doesn’t connect to anything. Civil disobedience, on the other hand, connects to everything (especially when half your class is African-American or Indian).
So I’ll start playing with next year’s calendar and get this where it belongs. I’ve already talked to O’C about where he’ll place the Vassar RR.
I can’t wait for September 2010!
We held the first (and far from last) MHL Workshop on Saturday. This stemmed from discussion on the NDCA listserver about costs and whatnot, and I foolishly jumped in and said, okay, we’ll throw a free one-day institute in the Fall for younger students. Sure. Why not? How hard can it be?
Last spring we quickly laid down a broad outline of modules. Then Kaz and JV and O’C and I sat down one hot summer night at the chez and polished it up. Then O’C went off to get instructors. As the VCA knows, I was a little wary of how long it was taking him to do this, but the man ultimately came through with some spectacular folks who did an amazing job for no other reason than that they’re good people. Cruz will shortly list them over on VBD (which I will call for once by its correct name, so that you know what I’m talking about and you go check it out). He’ll also post some pictures (of course).
We had attendees of every persuasion despite the earliness of the event. (We’ll do it later next year.) There were new coaches, parents, novices, JV, Pfffters, Policians, whatever. The hallways between modules were abuzz with people on their cell phones (and in real life communication) talking about the topics and whatnot. Engagement was full-on. Imagine what that would have been like a couple of weeks later!
I participated in the new coaches’ discussion, answering questions and helping folks out with stuff, and then I did second chair on PF case-writing with CP. He’s got a solid scholarly approach to content, so I took the position of filling up the blank sheet of paper, the one where I tell people I’m an editor so I know about writing. (I don’t tell them I’m a blogger because then they wouldn’t believe the claim that I know about writing.) What I enjoyed most, though, was the last session, brainstorming ModNov with these absolutely raw newbies. Sacre bleu (as no one in France has ever said, other than in the comic book “Scrooge McDuck on the Riviera”)! This was late in the day, and these people wouldn’t shut up! We covered all sorts of stuff at a very broad level, like right and wrong and rights in general and civil rights and what-have-you, and it was exciting. I can’t wait to do it with some Sailors. There is now no doubt in my mind that ModNov was a good idea, and that this was a good topic to choose. School tests, while relevant to students, doesn’t connect to anything. Civil disobedience, on the other hand, connects to everything (especially when half your class is African-American or Indian).
So I’ll start playing with next year’s calendar and get this where it belongs. I’ve already talked to O’C about where he’ll place the Vassar RR.
I can’t wait for September 2010!
Monday, August 17, 2009
It's all in how you look at it
Resolved: Public high school students in the United States ought not be required to pass standardized exit exams to graduate.
When this was posted originally, I didn't comment on it much except to say that it was one of the hot-button issues in education, and that I was worried that it might not allow for the most creative positions. After all, I had recently judged roughly the same topic in PF at Districts, and heard roughly the same things over and over again, so I wasn't necessarily thrilled, but I wasn't aghast either. It's perfectly debatable because there's clear sides that clearly clash. A classic albeit special (in philosophical terms) subject area, the nature/goal of education. It will work out well enough.
I can't say that it gives me any second thoughts about ModNov, though. I like to begin novice training with broad principles about ethics and politics and morality, and later apply those principles to whatever topic is at hand. Granted that some topics don't easily allow such application, but most do. What this Sep-Oct does is favor coaches who like to start with the strategy and tactics of debate per se. Nothing wrong with that, and Anjan makes a good comment about that over at WTF, citing how this topic has an immediate recognition factor with noobs. Of course, the value of ModNov is long term, and certainly doesn't deter anyone with a practical startup approach, although God knows, it's way more philosophic to the poor ninth graders out there than something like this that has real relevancy to them.
My greatest disappointment/relief is that the marriage resolution didn't get voted in. On the one hand, if it had, we could have sold tickets to ModNov, but on the other hand, everyone else, poor devils, would have had to debate it. Anyhow, this reminds me to dust off next year's list and send it in. I know the rezzes I like, and what the Sailors like. It's just a matter of pinning down which goes where.
When this was posted originally, I didn't comment on it much except to say that it was one of the hot-button issues in education, and that I was worried that it might not allow for the most creative positions. After all, I had recently judged roughly the same topic in PF at Districts, and heard roughly the same things over and over again, so I wasn't necessarily thrilled, but I wasn't aghast either. It's perfectly debatable because there's clear sides that clearly clash. A classic albeit special (in philosophical terms) subject area, the nature/goal of education. It will work out well enough.
I can't say that it gives me any second thoughts about ModNov, though. I like to begin novice training with broad principles about ethics and politics and morality, and later apply those principles to whatever topic is at hand. Granted that some topics don't easily allow such application, but most do. What this Sep-Oct does is favor coaches who like to start with the strategy and tactics of debate per se. Nothing wrong with that, and Anjan makes a good comment about that over at WTF, citing how this topic has an immediate recognition factor with noobs. Of course, the value of ModNov is long term, and certainly doesn't deter anyone with a practical startup approach, although God knows, it's way more philosophic to the poor ninth graders out there than something like this that has real relevancy to them.
My greatest disappointment/relief is that the marriage resolution didn't get voted in. On the one hand, if it had, we could have sold tickets to ModNov, but on the other hand, everyone else, poor devils, would have had to debate it. Anyhow, this reminds me to dust off next year's list and send it in. I know the rezzes I like, and what the Sailors like. It's just a matter of pinning down which goes where.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Slouching toward ModNov training
I can’t wait till next week, when my mind won’t feel so much like leftover broccoli soup. I’ve had to catch up on so many things at the DJ that I’ve barely treaded water anywhere else. This can’t keep up, I would imagine. I’ll get back to the correct speed and back on top of things soon, and life will go on accordingly. At least I hope so.
I’m starting to direct what little thinking I have available to the issues of how to start off novices in the world of ModNov. I’ll probably do some cross-posting over there, but needless to say, it is an issue of timely necessity, given that we will all have novices in about a month or so. Aside from topic-specific stuff, which wouldn’t come until a little later in the process, it’s not so much creating new curriculum as sorting and organizing the old curriculum in light of ModNov. Last year, thanks to the Fat Man on the Trolley resolution, I started with morality, which appeals to me on some levels (absent ModNov), because people generally have given at least some thought to the concepts of right and wrong by the time they’re high school freshmen, but I don’t think that makes sense in a vacuum, much less with civil disobedience. Do we not challenge the rule of law through civil disobedience, and by it place our own relativistic view of the world higher than the world’s view of the world? If you look at it that way, the rule of law is a much more difficult concept than the rule of relativistic self, and requires more explanation. That explanation goes directly to the creation of society, and thus the social contract. That is, why do we create a society? Then, what happens when we disagree with the society we’ve created? This order sounds right to me.
Speaking of which, the CatNats arguers on a right to health care often simply stated that because the classic constructs of rights protected by soc con did not include health care, therefore there was no such right. As I understand it, John Locke had really good coverage from his AARP supplemental plan, which is why he didn’t make it life, liberty, property and health care (at least except for preexisting conditions; this was the olden days after all). Anyhow, this kind of dogmaticism is probably why classic ethical training in LD has gotten a bad rap. We don’t believe things because Locke (or Rousseau or Kant or Rawls or the Old Baudleroo) said them; Locke (et alia) said them because they believed them. Philosophy is like mathematics: abstract constructs for understanding the real world. At the point at which philosophy is taken as reality, it’s not philosophy anymore.
I think I need another vacation…
I’m starting to direct what little thinking I have available to the issues of how to start off novices in the world of ModNov. I’ll probably do some cross-posting over there, but needless to say, it is an issue of timely necessity, given that we will all have novices in about a month or so. Aside from topic-specific stuff, which wouldn’t come until a little later in the process, it’s not so much creating new curriculum as sorting and organizing the old curriculum in light of ModNov. Last year, thanks to the Fat Man on the Trolley resolution, I started with morality, which appeals to me on some levels (absent ModNov), because people generally have given at least some thought to the concepts of right and wrong by the time they’re high school freshmen, but I don’t think that makes sense in a vacuum, much less with civil disobedience. Do we not challenge the rule of law through civil disobedience, and by it place our own relativistic view of the world higher than the world’s view of the world? If you look at it that way, the rule of law is a much more difficult concept than the rule of relativistic self, and requires more explanation. That explanation goes directly to the creation of society, and thus the social contract. That is, why do we create a society? Then, what happens when we disagree with the society we’ve created? This order sounds right to me.
Speaking of which, the CatNats arguers on a right to health care often simply stated that because the classic constructs of rights protected by soc con did not include health care, therefore there was no such right. As I understand it, John Locke had really good coverage from his AARP supplemental plan, which is why he didn’t make it life, liberty, property and health care (at least except for preexisting conditions; this was the olden days after all). Anyhow, this kind of dogmaticism is probably why classic ethical training in LD has gotten a bad rap. We don’t believe things because Locke (or Rousseau or Kant or Rawls or the Old Baudleroo) said them; Locke (et alia) said them because they believed them. Philosophy is like mathematics: abstract constructs for understanding the real world. At the point at which philosophy is taken as reality, it’s not philosophy anymore.
I think I need another vacation…
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Mass Matt? ModNov. Music. Musings. Movies. Mmmm.
Monti Matt seems to think that this whole blog exists for his personal amusement. Jeesh. Since I’ve already hired him for the next 40 Little Lex tournaments, I think this is a bit greedy on his part: He’ll be getting Sailor money; he needs Sailor yuks as well? Of course, I’m probably going to have to start calling him Boston Matty instead of Monti Matt. One must keep up with one’s locations.
We got Victory Briefs material via Bietz on the ModNov topic, which was, of course, previously a NatNats topic. Very generous, and I’ve posted it on the ModNov site. We’re starting to accrue some good material there. No one will complain that we didn’t provide background. There’s also a long, marginally anonymous (if you can’t parse the screenname) piece on legal positivism, which has about a hundred areas of analysis you could extract for cases; it was originally a comment, but it was too good not to move up to more prominence. I have a very good feeling about ModNov overall. We’ve got traction in the community, and people are paying attention. I think it’s going to work well.
I now have all of my iTunes library in one place. When I plug in an iPod, it can’t find a couple of loose podcasts, but overall, it’s all there. What a pain, but worth it in the end. I’m slowly but steadily filling up the MegaPod. Soon I’m going to have to limit what’s on it, as I limit what’s on the Touch. I probably don’t need, say, Godspell. Or anything by Andrew Lloyd Webber. (Once a year, sure, Cats manages to find its way to the CD player, but anyone who listens to Cats more than once a year has serious issues that need to be resolved outside the scope of this blog.) Which means that, now more than ever, I’m ready for whatever upgrade/new gizmo I end up buying. I noticed that Apple has upgraded the white MacBooks…
I did have fun tweeting a little bit of CatNats, and reading other people’s tweets (when I could get wireless access). Events like CatNats are made for Twitter, and/or vice versa. In addition, I used a specific Sailors account to keep us all connected, and that worked fine, at least for me and my crack Pfffters (my Pffft crackers?). We need to do more of this. For the most part I had nothing bad to say in my tweets (sorry, but PF ran like a charm with a very professional team in charge), which is unfortunate, because who wants to read that that rounds are all prompt, and it isn’t right to tweet personal comments about the debaters during the rounds (e.g., “I’m judging a total asshat from Tennessee Williams High School” or whatever). In fact, I actually did have to fight the urge to tweet during rounds. 140 characters fit perfectly into 2 minutes of PF prep time. By the way, I learned that there’s a lot of hoo-ha in the PF world when it comes to actually saying anying. Talk about starting friction! “Opponents ready? Judges ready? Partner ready? Tab room ready? Custodial staff ready? Sarah Palin ready?” A good Pfffter could squeeze a whole ‘nother minute of prep time into all these readys! I did miss the flip, though. And on top of that, the Roman Catholic Church has decided that Con asks the first question in the first CX, and Pro asks the first question in the next two CXes. What’s that all about? How liturgical are we going to get here? Apparently this reversed a rule where, well, somebody else asked the first question, which caused a dab or two of confusion during the day. Granted some people’s pointed questions are more commanding than other people’s, but trying to curtail the pointed questioners with prescribed order seems sort of weird. No big deal, really, but an unnecessary meddling. Speaking of which, I’ve got to update my PF how-to Real Soon Now. Not tonight. Tomorrow? Let’s see if my first summer hours Friday is rained on.
To the movies tonight, coincidentally also “Summer Hours,” and to Godot on Saturday. Ah. Summer. Saturdays in the city. No debate. This is the life.
We got Victory Briefs material via Bietz on the ModNov topic, which was, of course, previously a NatNats topic. Very generous, and I’ve posted it on the ModNov site. We’re starting to accrue some good material there. No one will complain that we didn’t provide background. There’s also a long, marginally anonymous (if you can’t parse the screenname) piece on legal positivism, which has about a hundred areas of analysis you could extract for cases; it was originally a comment, but it was too good not to move up to more prominence. I have a very good feeling about ModNov overall. We’ve got traction in the community, and people are paying attention. I think it’s going to work well.
I now have all of my iTunes library in one place. When I plug in an iPod, it can’t find a couple of loose podcasts, but overall, it’s all there. What a pain, but worth it in the end. I’m slowly but steadily filling up the MegaPod. Soon I’m going to have to limit what’s on it, as I limit what’s on the Touch. I probably don’t need, say, Godspell. Or anything by Andrew Lloyd Webber. (Once a year, sure, Cats manages to find its way to the CD player, but anyone who listens to Cats more than once a year has serious issues that need to be resolved outside the scope of this blog.) Which means that, now more than ever, I’m ready for whatever upgrade/new gizmo I end up buying. I noticed that Apple has upgraded the white MacBooks…
I did have fun tweeting a little bit of CatNats, and reading other people’s tweets (when I could get wireless access). Events like CatNats are made for Twitter, and/or vice versa. In addition, I used a specific Sailors account to keep us all connected, and that worked fine, at least for me and my crack Pfffters (my Pffft crackers?). We need to do more of this. For the most part I had nothing bad to say in my tweets (sorry, but PF ran like a charm with a very professional team in charge), which is unfortunate, because who wants to read that that rounds are all prompt, and it isn’t right to tweet personal comments about the debaters during the rounds (e.g., “I’m judging a total asshat from Tennessee Williams High School” or whatever). In fact, I actually did have to fight the urge to tweet during rounds. 140 characters fit perfectly into 2 minutes of PF prep time. By the way, I learned that there’s a lot of hoo-ha in the PF world when it comes to actually saying anying. Talk about starting friction! “Opponents ready? Judges ready? Partner ready? Tab room ready? Custodial staff ready? Sarah Palin ready?” A good Pfffter could squeeze a whole ‘nother minute of prep time into all these readys! I did miss the flip, though. And on top of that, the Roman Catholic Church has decided that Con asks the first question in the first CX, and Pro asks the first question in the next two CXes. What’s that all about? How liturgical are we going to get here? Apparently this reversed a rule where, well, somebody else asked the first question, which caused a dab or two of confusion during the day. Granted some people’s pointed questions are more commanding than other people’s, but trying to curtail the pointed questioners with prescribed order seems sort of weird. No big deal, really, but an unnecessary meddling. Speaking of which, I’ve got to update my PF how-to Real Soon Now. Not tonight. Tomorrow? Let’s see if my first summer hours Friday is rained on.
To the movies tonight, coincidentally also “Summer Hours,” and to Godot on Saturday. Ah. Summer. Saturdays in the city. No debate. This is the life.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
In which we study the irons in today's fire.
I’m trying to be productive. Really. I’m not just bloviating on my pipedream of an active virtual coaches league. In fact, I’m putting that aside for a while (or more to the point, working up some concrete examples offline). So, meanwhile, what else is going on?
First of all, CatNats is this weekend. My chief interest is learning some more about Pffft, which I’ll be judging. As I’ve said before, what eludes me is a paradigm for winning rounds. What, exactly, is a team supposed to do? In the rounds I’ve seen, admittedly of a pick-up nature (at Districts), everybody knew how to put it together but nobody knew how to close. But in debate, closing = winning. So, how do (presumably) good Pfffters close? With luck, I’ll find out. Or maybe everybody just flounders around, hoping that looking sharp will do the job. I certainly hope not, but what is, is. We’ll find out soon enough.
I’ll also be testing Twitter as a team-roundup tool, with a small experimental team to round up (the Panivore and the People’s Champion). Relatives at home will follow our progress. This should keep everybody connected and provide the sort of information that families like to have (such as, is my child still on the planet?). Additionally, I’ll be microblogging on Twitter at @jimmenick, if anyone is interested. That information will not be echoed over to Facebook, needless to say. My feeling is, get the right tool for the job. Facebook is not a good tool for microblogging (despite Zuckerberg’s feelings to the contrary); Twitter is. Of course, I’m aware how Twitter is quite definitely not an adolescent’s app. The numbers on this are rather clear that it is a tool for the fogie contingent. Still, that’s no reason for students not to embrace it, or at least debate students, who are hardly representative of the breed of adolescent in the wild. (More of a subspecies, if you ask me. Or a mutation.)
I’ve put together a tentative (and I mean tentative!) curriculum for the MHL institute/workshop in September, and passed it along to the usual suspects. As I said to them, I’m probably the last person who should be doing this, having had no experience of debate institutes a’tall, but I did take notes at our initial discussion, and I do know how to construct a spreadsheet…
Another issue that’s hanging fire is developing some content for the Modest Novice. I’d like to get some structured material posted so that coaches can work from, at the very least, a decent brief. In a way, that will dovetail with the MHLi/w, which will cover ModNov for the newbies. Again, it’s something that’s got to be done, so, I guess I’ve gotta do it. I did post an interesting article on legal postivism, which is hardly novice grist, but is quite interesting for the rest of us.
And lastly, I’m looking forward later tonight to hooking up my 1T hard drive. I think it makes sense to network it, which would untether Little Elvis, which if nothing else is my iTunes machine, but which also could use a little fresh air and exercise as I cogitate over what and how to upgrade this Fall. So many options: netbooks (with Windows 7, about which I’ve heard nothing but praise), MacBooks with Snow Leopard (about which I’ll assume nothing but praise, but having a non-Intel Mac is starting to get a little lonely), iMacs (think desktop), etc., etc. Oh, yeah, I should point out, as well, so little money. Last I heard there was a recession going on around here.
So, that’s where we are on most fronts of interest. Excelsior, you fathead! (As Jean Shepherd would explain it.)
First of all, CatNats is this weekend. My chief interest is learning some more about Pffft, which I’ll be judging. As I’ve said before, what eludes me is a paradigm for winning rounds. What, exactly, is a team supposed to do? In the rounds I’ve seen, admittedly of a pick-up nature (at Districts), everybody knew how to put it together but nobody knew how to close. But in debate, closing = winning. So, how do (presumably) good Pfffters close? With luck, I’ll find out. Or maybe everybody just flounders around, hoping that looking sharp will do the job. I certainly hope not, but what is, is. We’ll find out soon enough.
I’ll also be testing Twitter as a team-roundup tool, with a small experimental team to round up (the Panivore and the People’s Champion). Relatives at home will follow our progress. This should keep everybody connected and provide the sort of information that families like to have (such as, is my child still on the planet?). Additionally, I’ll be microblogging on Twitter at @jimmenick, if anyone is interested. That information will not be echoed over to Facebook, needless to say. My feeling is, get the right tool for the job. Facebook is not a good tool for microblogging (despite Zuckerberg’s feelings to the contrary); Twitter is. Of course, I’m aware how Twitter is quite definitely not an adolescent’s app. The numbers on this are rather clear that it is a tool for the fogie contingent. Still, that’s no reason for students not to embrace it, or at least debate students, who are hardly representative of the breed of adolescent in the wild. (More of a subspecies, if you ask me. Or a mutation.)
I’ve put together a tentative (and I mean tentative!) curriculum for the MHL institute/workshop in September, and passed it along to the usual suspects. As I said to them, I’m probably the last person who should be doing this, having had no experience of debate institutes a’tall, but I did take notes at our initial discussion, and I do know how to construct a spreadsheet…
Another issue that’s hanging fire is developing some content for the Modest Novice. I’d like to get some structured material posted so that coaches can work from, at the very least, a decent brief. In a way, that will dovetail with the MHLi/w, which will cover ModNov for the newbies. Again, it’s something that’s got to be done, so, I guess I’ve gotta do it. I did post an interesting article on legal postivism, which is hardly novice grist, but is quite interesting for the rest of us.
And lastly, I’m looking forward later tonight to hooking up my 1T hard drive. I think it makes sense to network it, which would untether Little Elvis, which if nothing else is my iTunes machine, but which also could use a little fresh air and exercise as I cogitate over what and how to upgrade this Fall. So many options: netbooks (with Windows 7, about which I’ve heard nothing but praise), MacBooks with Snow Leopard (about which I’ll assume nothing but praise, but having a non-Intel Mac is starting to get a little lonely), iMacs (think desktop), etc., etc. Oh, yeah, I should point out, as well, so little money. Last I heard there was a recession going on around here.
So, that’s where we are on most fronts of interest. Excelsior, you fathead! (As Jean Shepherd would explain it.)
Thursday, April 16, 2009
ModNov rises from the dead, and Nero twitters while Rome burns
We just went through a remarkable false ending over at the Modest Novice. I had sort of reached a personal mental impasse, for one reason or another. We certainly weren’t getting uniform agreement on the wording, and I was beginning to wonder if we weren’t just chasing chimeras, and I figured close was close enough, and let’s put this puppy out of its misery. So, I announced the final topic. At which point CP instantly demurred, using less vigorous language than usual (he threatened neither my life nor the life of my cats), saying that we could do better. He’s right. So, the discussion remains open, but it has now heated up. Dive in, if you have an opinion, especially if you have an improvement. We’ve kicked around violence, so to speak, and I think dismissed it, based on Sheryl’s discussion (which made a lot of sense to me). Most else is up for grabs, though. And I really do want to put this puppy out of its misery. Please help me before CP does, indeed, threaten the lives of my cats. They’ve never hurt anyone (except SuperSquirrel, but she brings it on herself).
I’m also trying to coordinate with CP the use of the @tabroom Twitter account. It does make sense that he gets publishing access to it, but I’m trying to do that short of just having him sign in as me. After all, my own plan is to use my own cell (and home account of @jimmenick) to direct-message to @tabroom which will then broadcast to the assembled multitudes. I want to keep this as a phone thing, since that’s the physical medium everyone always has at tournaments. The thing is, CP hasn’t caught the Twitter bug yet, so we’re hemming and hawing about it. In any case, as I’ve said, Saturday I’ll be running a test session at the Spring Fun RR, so you can sign up between now and then to follow it live. (Live coverage! I’m starting to sound like WTF! Jeesh. And O’C hasn’t even got a Twitter acct yet, despite Bietz’s trying to batter him into it. Can you imagine the nightmare when O’C finally does sign up? We’ll all have to turn our cell phones in to the local authorities.) @jimmenick is becoming a place for me mostly to post tech and entertainment stuff, meanwhile, if you have any interest in that. Pick your poison. I’ll try to make them entertaining or useful enough to warrant people’s interest.
One thing about Twitter, by the way, is that half the people who follow you seem to be businesses of some sort or another. And the mobile updates I want seem to not take, or at least not take permanently, but then if you check somewhere else, they do. Oy. For a fad app, this is one pile of problems. Would Google please buy them, now, and take us all out of their misery?
O’C, by they way, is texting off and on from Andorra, home of the Disney princesses. Or something like that. You’ve got to love the iPhone. It even works when you’re trapped in the back seat of a Citroen surrounded by your cobbler cousins from Cabrales, eating their own homemade cheese, driving through the French countryside and wondering if you’re missing any new updates on the Star Trek film. At least he doesn’t have to suffer through finding dates for the Northeast Chumps. Lucky #(*&$^@%!
I’m also trying to coordinate with CP the use of the @tabroom Twitter account. It does make sense that he gets publishing access to it, but I’m trying to do that short of just having him sign in as me. After all, my own plan is to use my own cell (and home account of @jimmenick) to direct-message to @tabroom which will then broadcast to the assembled multitudes. I want to keep this as a phone thing, since that’s the physical medium everyone always has at tournaments. The thing is, CP hasn’t caught the Twitter bug yet, so we’re hemming and hawing about it. In any case, as I’ve said, Saturday I’ll be running a test session at the Spring Fun RR, so you can sign up between now and then to follow it live. (Live coverage! I’m starting to sound like WTF! Jeesh. And O’C hasn’t even got a Twitter acct yet, despite Bietz’s trying to batter him into it. Can you imagine the nightmare when O’C finally does sign up? We’ll all have to turn our cell phones in to the local authorities.) @jimmenick is becoming a place for me mostly to post tech and entertainment stuff, meanwhile, if you have any interest in that. Pick your poison. I’ll try to make them entertaining or useful enough to warrant people’s interest.
One thing about Twitter, by the way, is that half the people who follow you seem to be businesses of some sort or another. And the mobile updates I want seem to not take, or at least not take permanently, but then if you check somewhere else, they do. Oy. For a fad app, this is one pile of problems. Would Google please buy them, now, and take us all out of their misery?
O’C, by they way, is texting off and on from Andorra, home of the Disney princesses. Or something like that. You’ve got to love the iPhone. It even works when you’re trapped in the back seat of a Citroen surrounded by your cobbler cousins from Cabrales, eating their own homemade cheese, driving through the French countryside and wondering if you’re missing any new updates on the Star Trek film. At least he doesn’t have to suffer through finding dates for the Northeast Chumps. Lucky #(*&$^@%!
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
I don't give a fig about dates, etc.
It is proving to be radically difficult to schedule the end-of-season tournaments for next year. I did send out a notice about the MHL, including a tentative schedule for 2009-10, although I did manage to forget that there has been some under-the-table talk about a March edition. But then again, where to put it? Where to put anything in March, for that matter?
The usual March is CFL qualifier, SATs, Districts. This year we tossed the Bobcat on weekend 2 and added the Northeast Chumps the weekend after districts. There was universal enervation as a result: it was just too many tournaments too bunched together too late in the season with, in most cases, too much riding on them. I only managed to scare up one Bobcatter, for instance, although I was able to roust a goodly number of Sailors for the Chumps. As for Districts, since I’m no longer running it, and there are few nautical students who would actually attend even if they qualified (I probably hold the record for non-attending qualifiers in the region), I’m not particularly enthused about paying money to fill up slots just to bolster attendance, and this year I managed only one lone lorn creetur. So my hearty Tars aren’t exactly exempt from too-pooped-to-debate pop any more than anyone else. Throw into the mix Easter, Spring holidays, and the (at the moment) unknown date of NY States, plus the dates of the various NJ and Ma tournaments, and you’ve got quite a jumble. I, for one, am at sixes and sevens. (I would prefer elevenses.) And into this hopeless jumble we want to add another MHL?
Oy.
I think I may put this whole thing aside for a few days and concentrate instead on the Modest Novice. I swore that I would spend Tax Day coming to a decision. I wish there were more universal acceptance of any one wording. Just when I think I’m close, some yabbo comes up with some really good reason that I’m not even in the right church, much less the right pew. But I am beginning to believe that maybe we’re all evaluating it too much as if we were setting varsity on it rather than the rawest novices. No one will debate this topic after their third or fourth tournament, most of the rounds of which will have been spent learning how not to drool on yourself and where to look while you’re talking and things like that, while the underlying framework of the topic is good old-fashioned social contract and morality and stuff like that, that can be organized quite neatly for newbies’ introduction to the business. I mean, if novices can argue throwing thefat guy gentleman of the extra-avoirdupois persuasion off the bridge, they can argue civil disobedience heads-up, I think. Anyhow, rumblings will emanate from this source very soon. Decisions must be made. Nails must be hammered. Dies must be cast.
Oy again.
Anyhow, don’t forget to sign up on Twitter to follow @tabroom for the nonstop action from the Chetan and Kathryn Round Robin this weekend. The big question everybody is asking is if all the ballots put together will have as many words on them as any one ballot from CH himself. Only time will tell.
The usual March is CFL qualifier, SATs, Districts. This year we tossed the Bobcat on weekend 2 and added the Northeast Chumps the weekend after districts. There was universal enervation as a result: it was just too many tournaments too bunched together too late in the season with, in most cases, too much riding on them. I only managed to scare up one Bobcatter, for instance, although I was able to roust a goodly number of Sailors for the Chumps. As for Districts, since I’m no longer running it, and there are few nautical students who would actually attend even if they qualified (I probably hold the record for non-attending qualifiers in the region), I’m not particularly enthused about paying money to fill up slots just to bolster attendance, and this year I managed only one lone lorn creetur. So my hearty Tars aren’t exactly exempt from too-pooped-to-debate pop any more than anyone else. Throw into the mix Easter, Spring holidays, and the (at the moment) unknown date of NY States, plus the dates of the various NJ and Ma tournaments, and you’ve got quite a jumble. I, for one, am at sixes and sevens. (I would prefer elevenses.) And into this hopeless jumble we want to add another MHL?
Oy.
I think I may put this whole thing aside for a few days and concentrate instead on the Modest Novice. I swore that I would spend Tax Day coming to a decision. I wish there were more universal acceptance of any one wording. Just when I think I’m close, some yabbo comes up with some really good reason that I’m not even in the right church, much less the right pew. But I am beginning to believe that maybe we’re all evaluating it too much as if we were setting varsity on it rather than the rawest novices. No one will debate this topic after their third or fourth tournament, most of the rounds of which will have been spent learning how not to drool on yourself and where to look while you’re talking and things like that, while the underlying framework of the topic is good old-fashioned social contract and morality and stuff like that, that can be organized quite neatly for newbies’ introduction to the business. I mean, if novices can argue throwing the
Oy again.
Anyhow, don’t forget to sign up on Twitter to follow @tabroom for the nonstop action from the Chetan and Kathryn Round Robin this weekend. The big question everybody is asking is if all the ballots put together will have as many words on them as any one ballot from CH himself. Only time will tell.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Modnov update and tales of tech to come
First, a cross-post from the Modest Novice. My hope is to light on something by the middle of this month, and then maybe get consensus and then just do it. I think we could debate what we have now pretty well. It will give us social contract and justice, with a hint of oaky morality and blackberry overtones: it’s an ambitious little topic and I think you’ll be amused by its pretensions.
Meanwhile, mostly these last few days I’ve been slogging through Twitter and Facebook and their communion or lack thereof. What’s the best way to use these things? The fact that the new Facebook interface is, as many have suggested, a Twitter interface clone, is interesting. If Twitter is for fast-paced stuff, and Facebook is more for general communication, you gotta wonder. Anyhow, I apologize in advance to people who follow me on either of these venues (not to mention people who will have to suffer reading about it through this venue), especially if all you’re interested in is my complaining about other coaches. (Okay. O’C sucks. There. That’s your fix for the day.) I’m going to be doing a lot of experimenting over the next few weeks as I play around and learn and figure out what I really want to do. Ignore me for a while, if you must (although I have asked O’C, who really doesn’t suck—although he does know the names of the characters in the film “Dumb and Dumber,” which does make you wonder—to enlist as a Twitter tester for me). Otherwise, I will be keeping you posted up the wazoo. You’ve been warned.
Twitter is a piece of work, let me tell you. First of all, I’ve got two perfectly good accounts. One is jimmenick (I thought long and hard about that one) and the other is tabroom (another user name that was less than elusive). But here’s my thinking. Tabroom would be for literal tab business at tournaments. Follow tabroom at Twitter and you’ll get instant news about the tournament, like sked updates and round releases and the like. Very useful especially at big, multi-location venues like Yale and Princeton and Columbia. I’ve set it up so I can send a message to tabroom from my phone and have it broadcast over the tabroom channel. This is a bigger issue than you think because you can only have one phone connection to Twitter, and I’ve already set jimmenick to be that one. I used GroupTweet to make this happen. So anyone following tabroom will get the latest about tournaments, probably starting with announcements before the tournament (closing dates and the like). That can be useful. At least, that’s my thinking at the moment. It is bound to change.
Trying to set up a third account has not been easy. First of all, if you look up “down” in the dictionary, they have a picture of Twitter. No wonder people are tattooing themselves with the fail whale. Down is Twitter’s constant state. I’m thinking that if immediacy is the issue, we might need to backup with Facebook postings as well. I mean, you can follow someone’s Facebook postings on your phone, if you want. That may be a better solution? I’m not sure, but probably not. Is a puzzlement, though. Anyhow, the third connection was so I’d have a channel to communicate solely to the Sailors and their families, things like bus timings and ETAs and come here Watson I need you and go get lunch and that sort of thing. For some reason, I can’t access/follow my third connections (I’ve tried a bunch). Communicating between tabroom and jimmenick has been a breeze, but nothing further than that.
I don’t know. I don’t really want to use Facebook for this because, well, I use Facebook for other things, like keeping up with alums and (real) friends in general rather than minute-by-minute. A communications network that is solely (or at least primarily) phone-based makes sense in the universe where everyone has phones. But everything I’ve heard about Twitter’s unreliability is proving out (it was just down for the last half hour, for instance). And Facebook has its own phone connections. We’ll just have to see. If you’re going to Yale, be ready for some serious testing. And as I say, over the next few weeks, I’ll be talking about it a lot.
Meanwhile, I hope you’ve enjoyed a pleasant April Fool’s Day. I, for one, do not specifically celebrate this holiday, believing instead that the spirit of April Fool’s Day should be spread throughout the year. Everything I have said today has been the absolute truth if, in fact, there is such a thing as absolute truth, which is another subject altogether.
Meanwhile, mostly these last few days I’ve been slogging through Twitter and Facebook and their communion or lack thereof. What’s the best way to use these things? The fact that the new Facebook interface is, as many have suggested, a Twitter interface clone, is interesting. If Twitter is for fast-paced stuff, and Facebook is more for general communication, you gotta wonder. Anyhow, I apologize in advance to people who follow me on either of these venues (not to mention people who will have to suffer reading about it through this venue), especially if all you’re interested in is my complaining about other coaches. (Okay. O’C sucks. There. That’s your fix for the day.) I’m going to be doing a lot of experimenting over the next few weeks as I play around and learn and figure out what I really want to do. Ignore me for a while, if you must (although I have asked O’C, who really doesn’t suck—although he does know the names of the characters in the film “Dumb and Dumber,” which does make you wonder—to enlist as a Twitter tester for me). Otherwise, I will be keeping you posted up the wazoo. You’ve been warned.
Twitter is a piece of work, let me tell you. First of all, I’ve got two perfectly good accounts. One is jimmenick (I thought long and hard about that one) and the other is tabroom (another user name that was less than elusive). But here’s my thinking. Tabroom would be for literal tab business at tournaments. Follow tabroom at Twitter and you’ll get instant news about the tournament, like sked updates and round releases and the like. Very useful especially at big, multi-location venues like Yale and Princeton and Columbia. I’ve set it up so I can send a message to tabroom from my phone and have it broadcast over the tabroom channel. This is a bigger issue than you think because you can only have one phone connection to Twitter, and I’ve already set jimmenick to be that one. I used GroupTweet to make this happen. So anyone following tabroom will get the latest about tournaments, probably starting with announcements before the tournament (closing dates and the like). That can be useful. At least, that’s my thinking at the moment. It is bound to change.
Trying to set up a third account has not been easy. First of all, if you look up “down” in the dictionary, they have a picture of Twitter. No wonder people are tattooing themselves with the fail whale. Down is Twitter’s constant state. I’m thinking that if immediacy is the issue, we might need to backup with Facebook postings as well. I mean, you can follow someone’s Facebook postings on your phone, if you want. That may be a better solution? I’m not sure, but probably not. Is a puzzlement, though. Anyhow, the third connection was so I’d have a channel to communicate solely to the Sailors and their families, things like bus timings and ETAs and come here Watson I need you and go get lunch and that sort of thing. For some reason, I can’t access/follow my third connections (I’ve tried a bunch). Communicating between tabroom and jimmenick has been a breeze, but nothing further than that.
I don’t know. I don’t really want to use Facebook for this because, well, I use Facebook for other things, like keeping up with alums and (real) friends in general rather than minute-by-minute. A communications network that is solely (or at least primarily) phone-based makes sense in the universe where everyone has phones. But everything I’ve heard about Twitter’s unreliability is proving out (it was just down for the last half hour, for instance). And Facebook has its own phone connections. We’ll just have to see. If you’re going to Yale, be ready for some serious testing. And as I say, over the next few weeks, I’ll be talking about it a lot.
Meanwhile, I hope you’ve enjoyed a pleasant April Fool’s Day. I, for one, do not specifically celebrate this holiday, believing instead that the spirit of April Fool’s Day should be spread throughout the year. Everything I have said today has been the absolute truth if, in fact, there is such a thing as absolute truth, which is another subject altogether.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Modnov plus the triumphant return of bracketology
Get the latest on modnov.
And this being March Madness season, I offer Menick Madness. It's been a couple of years since we've done these, and a few new ones seemed in order.
Bracket for the best person you'll never be judged by. You can also use this to determine the worst person you'll never be judged by.
Bracket for your most personally important tech item of the 21st Century.
And finally, and probably most interestingly—not to mention my personal favorite—a bracket for the quintessential O'C.
And this being March Madness season, I offer Menick Madness. It's been a couple of years since we've done these, and a few new ones seemed in order.
Bracket for the best person you'll never be judged by. You can also use this to determine the worst person you'll never be judged by.
Bracket for your most personally important tech item of the 21st Century.
And finally, and probably most interestingly—not to mention my personal favorite—a bracket for the quintessential O'C.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
It's time to settle on the novice topic
At the very top of the things-to-do list is finalizing the Modest Novice. I've already said what I want to say over on the Modest Novice site, so I'll just cross-post. http://www.modestnovice.org/2009/03/17/possible-wordings/
(I'm sure we'll return to news and views and general bologna soon enough here. I've lately come to realize that whenever I say something that is, shall we say, less than glowing about persons who remain anonymous, 95% of the VCA thinks I'm talking about them. Howvanevain! Still, I would hate to keep you from your general albeit misguided rankles, so bear with me a little bit, and we'll tell you everything you need to know about you-know-who, whatchamacallit and you yourself—you bloody vile spalpeen—soon enough.)
(I'm sure we'll return to news and views and general bologna soon enough here. I've lately come to realize that whenever I say something that is, shall we say, less than glowing about persons who remain anonymous, 95% of the VCA thinks I'm talking about them. How
Thursday, February 26, 2009
A new tale, plus other odds and ends; in other words, enough of rules for a while
All right, I’ve got all that off my chest, so let’s get back to business as usual.
First of all, last weekend was the final MHL of the season. How better to acknowledge it than with a new Tale of Debate Adventure? You’ll find the audio version here on The View from Tab, and the pdf version here, just out in the cloud in general. If you crave more of the same, and haven’t listened to the first T of D A, I’ve reorganized the right-hand column to make these more prominent. I expect more will come eventually, unless I get sued for slander and/or libel and/or gross exaggeration over the ones I’ve already done, so I figured I might as well make room for them. (If you subscribe to The View from Tab on iTunes, by the way, you’ll get these turning up on your iPod automatically. What’s stopping you?)
I managed to get involved in that whole rules thing, so I put aside the Modest Novice for a while, but I promise, again, to sort it all out within the next week or two. If you haven’t already done so, go on over to ModestNovice.org and check out where we are so far. Complaining about the outcome will do you no good if you haven’t participated in the ingo, if you know what I mean. (And, knowing you, you probably do.)
Coming up this weekend is Lakeland, which I’ll be tabbing with O’C, although his approach will be to arrive by stretch limo in the early evening, thus avoiding having to rub elbows with the hoi and the polloi during registration, a plan he intends to follow a lot in the coming year. Well, lah-di-dah, as they say. (He promises he’ll be at all of Bump, however. What a prince.) He’s also getting bivouacked at the chez Friday night; maybe new Tales of D A will ensue. You never know. Anyhow, Friday and Saturday are the invitational as usual, but Saturday is also the Regionals competition for States, the last-ditch chance for people to grab a full qual in one swell foop. Given that Stefan has enough Policians at the invitational to invade Cuba, I have no idea where he is going to put all these people. Oh, well. That’s his problem. O’C and I will sort it all out tab-wise for Catholic Charlie, who is our Statesman as well as our Catholician. (How did he get all the thankless jobs?)
And through it all, I now have a Wii, which really is the perfect system for people who like games but don’t have any time to play them. So far all I’ve done is begin working my way through the Lego version of Star Wars, and I’m already in the middle of Episode II, which for me is epic, given that I usually never get past the first level in anything before giving up in disgust. My success now might be attributable to a very forgiving system that allows you to sort of kill stuff without getting too killed yourself, which, as I say, is just my style. When I retire, I’ll get an Xbox 360 (which will probably be up to 720 by then), but meanwhile the Wii suits me just fine. Of course, I bought the thing to play Wii Sports when my daughter drops in for a visit, but I haven’t even cracked open the cellophane on that one yet. I think tonight I face Count Duku. Wish me luck.
First of all, last weekend was the final MHL of the season. How better to acknowledge it than with a new Tale of Debate Adventure? You’ll find the audio version here on The View from Tab, and the pdf version here, just out in the cloud in general. If you crave more of the same, and haven’t listened to the first T of D A, I’ve reorganized the right-hand column to make these more prominent. I expect more will come eventually, unless I get sued for slander and/or libel and/or gross exaggeration over the ones I’ve already done, so I figured I might as well make room for them. (If you subscribe to The View from Tab on iTunes, by the way, you’ll get these turning up on your iPod automatically. What’s stopping you?)
I managed to get involved in that whole rules thing, so I put aside the Modest Novice for a while, but I promise, again, to sort it all out within the next week or two. If you haven’t already done so, go on over to ModestNovice.org and check out where we are so far. Complaining about the outcome will do you no good if you haven’t participated in the ingo, if you know what I mean. (And, knowing you, you probably do.)
Coming up this weekend is Lakeland, which I’ll be tabbing with O’C, although his approach will be to arrive by stretch limo in the early evening, thus avoiding having to rub elbows with the hoi and the polloi during registration, a plan he intends to follow a lot in the coming year. Well, lah-di-dah, as they say. (He promises he’ll be at all of Bump, however. What a prince.) He’s also getting bivouacked at the chez Friday night; maybe new Tales of D A will ensue. You never know. Anyhow, Friday and Saturday are the invitational as usual, but Saturday is also the Regionals competition for States, the last-ditch chance for people to grab a full qual in one swell foop. Given that Stefan has enough Policians at the invitational to invade Cuba, I have no idea where he is going to put all these people. Oh, well. That’s his problem. O’C and I will sort it all out tab-wise for Catholic Charlie, who is our Statesman as well as our Catholician. (How did he get all the thankless jobs?)
And through it all, I now have a Wii, which really is the perfect system for people who like games but don’t have any time to play them. So far all I’ve done is begin working my way through the Lego version of Star Wars, and I’m already in the middle of Episode II, which for me is epic, given that I usually never get past the first level in anything before giving up in disgust. My success now might be attributable to a very forgiving system that allows you to sort of kill stuff without getting too killed yourself, which, as I say, is just my style. When I retire, I’ll get an Xbox 360 (which will probably be up to 720 by then), but meanwhile the Wii suits me just fine. Of course, I bought the thing to play Wii Sports when my daughter drops in for a visit, but I haven’t even cracked open the cellophane on that one yet. I think tonight I face Count Duku. Wish me luck.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
March-April, Modest Novice, the Kindle 2
(Notice the very informative headline? Well, given that anyone worth their salt nowadays uses an RSS reader, I figured it's time for me to go with the flow. How can I get you to read the whole article if all you see is my subject lines and they're unintelligible? Or worse, completely intelligible?)
Vigilantes, sez you? Well, you’re welcome to this, sez I. http://www.jimmenick.com/images/vigilantes.pdf It’s in the traditional NFL style of overview, readings and argument ideas. I won’t have many Sailors taking the law into their own hands, as it turns out; we have only the CatNats qualifier and Districts on this resolution, and the latter becomes less and less likely for any serious consideration as there is, apparently, a history regents exam dead in the middle of NatNats. Quelle surprise, as they don’t say in France. So maybe only SuperSquirrel will ever debate vigilantes. So it goes. Our other CFL Grands qualifier endeavor is the creation of the greatest PF team ever, which we are working on in the top-secret Sailor laboratory, ever hopeful that we can somehow snag a slot that seems so available, yet somehow so distant. (I will not review the sad history of the Sailors at last year’s Pffft-fest, except to point out that pfffft is too good a word for it. Don’t tell anyone, but here’s the 3 simple secrets to winning PF rounds:
1. Research
2. Research
3. Research
In the past, Sailors have attempted to get by mostly on their native charm. Not the best idea, eh?)
If you haven’t already done so, mosey over to modestnovice.org and help us figure out the wording of next year’s novice resolution. The more input we get, the better. My daughter was having problems posting a comment; let me know if you also have problems, so we can complain to CP (I haven’t complained to him about anything for hours now).
You can’t imagine how much I’m looking forward to my upcoming non-debate weekend in NYC. We’ve got ducats for this and that, and plans for the other as well. A nice dose of culture, popular and un-. All we need is the weather not to be too dreadful (always an issue in mid-February).
Like everyone else with an internet connection, I’ve been gazing at the Kindle 2, and I have to admit, for the first time I’m actually beginning to think nice thoughts. Kindle 1 was okay—I did get my hands on one for a while—and this improves on some of my complaints (especially page-change speed). I could really see getting one of these suckers if it didn’t cost the proverbial A and an L. (That’s an arm and a leg to you cliché-deprived types.) I’m also beginning to get intrigued about how this thing can play into the DJ, given that I am, after all, in traditional publishing. Is traditional publishing going the way of the buggy whip? An article I read this morning compared ebooks to talkies, and publishers to silent film producers. Maybe, but if I’m not mistaken, the cost of talkies, for patrons, was the same as the cost of silents. As long as there’s the heavy initial hardware buy-in, I can’t see ebooks jumping past early adapters and techies. At the same time, I don’t really see books really working in big numbers on the sort of competing iPhone/Touch platform (even though every now and then I do go back to “Leaves of Grass,” which is one of the books I’ve been toting around with me on my Touch, and one that responds well enough to the occasional glance). The screen is just too small, even though it’s perfectly sharp. I mean, I was raised on those old Penguin classics, with type so small I had to get a new prescription on my eyeglasses every time I finished reading one of them, but the Touch size is just not working for me. The Kindle size, on the other hand, is about just right. Maybe it boils down to whoever makes the $50 ebook reader is the ultimate winner. I don’t know. I have nothing against the concept per se, but at the moment, I do have something against paying all that money for it. I’m not betting against it, though. I’m hedging. I think I’ll sit on my chips for awhile before making any commitment. In the meanwhile, good-old-fashioned books on paper, despite all the economic turmoil in the publishing business (and everywhere else) still looks like a reasonable bet, at least for the short term.
Vigilantes, sez you? Well, you’re welcome to this, sez I. http://www.jimmenick.com/images/vigilantes.pdf It’s in the traditional NFL style of overview, readings and argument ideas. I won’t have many Sailors taking the law into their own hands, as it turns out; we have only the CatNats qualifier and Districts on this resolution, and the latter becomes less and less likely for any serious consideration as there is, apparently, a history regents exam dead in the middle of NatNats. Quelle surprise, as they don’t say in France. So maybe only SuperSquirrel will ever debate vigilantes. So it goes. Our other CFL Grands qualifier endeavor is the creation of the greatest PF team ever, which we are working on in the top-secret Sailor laboratory, ever hopeful that we can somehow snag a slot that seems so available, yet somehow so distant. (I will not review the sad history of the Sailors at last year’s Pffft-fest, except to point out that pfffft is too good a word for it. Don’t tell anyone, but here’s the 3 simple secrets to winning PF rounds:
1. Research
2. Research
3. Research
In the past, Sailors have attempted to get by mostly on their native charm. Not the best idea, eh?)
If you haven’t already done so, mosey over to modestnovice.org and help us figure out the wording of next year’s novice resolution. The more input we get, the better. My daughter was having problems posting a comment; let me know if you also have problems, so we can complain to CP (I haven’t complained to him about anything for hours now).
You can’t imagine how much I’m looking forward to my upcoming non-debate weekend in NYC. We’ve got ducats for this and that, and plans for the other as well. A nice dose of culture, popular and un-. All we need is the weather not to be too dreadful (always an issue in mid-February).
Like everyone else with an internet connection, I’ve been gazing at the Kindle 2, and I have to admit, for the first time I’m actually beginning to think nice thoughts. Kindle 1 was okay—I did get my hands on one for a while—and this improves on some of my complaints (especially page-change speed). I could really see getting one of these suckers if it didn’t cost the proverbial A and an L. (That’s an arm and a leg to you cliché-deprived types.) I’m also beginning to get intrigued about how this thing can play into the DJ, given that I am, after all, in traditional publishing. Is traditional publishing going the way of the buggy whip? An article I read this morning compared ebooks to talkies, and publishers to silent film producers. Maybe, but if I’m not mistaken, the cost of talkies, for patrons, was the same as the cost of silents. As long as there’s the heavy initial hardware buy-in, I can’t see ebooks jumping past early adapters and techies. At the same time, I don’t really see books really working in big numbers on the sort of competing iPhone/Touch platform (even though every now and then I do go back to “Leaves of Grass,” which is one of the books I’ve been toting around with me on my Touch, and one that responds well enough to the occasional glance). The screen is just too small, even though it’s perfectly sharp. I mean, I was raised on those old Penguin classics, with type so small I had to get a new prescription on my eyeglasses every time I finished reading one of them, but the Touch size is just not working for me. The Kindle size, on the other hand, is about just right. Maybe it boils down to whoever makes the $50 ebook reader is the ultimate winner. I don’t know. I have nothing against the concept per se, but at the moment, I do have something against paying all that money for it. I’m not betting against it, though. I’m hedging. I think I’ll sit on my chips for awhile before making any commitment. In the meanwhile, good-old-fashioned books on paper, despite all the economic turmoil in the publishing business (and everywhere else) still looks like a reasonable bet, at least for the short term.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Modnov and MHLW updates
A couple of things. First of all, the Modest Novice website is up and running, thanks to CP, at http://www.modestnovice.org/ I’d be curious to hear what everyone has to say about the wording of the resolution, which is the next big item on the agenda. We’re doing civil disobedience, as I pointed out earlier, but we don’t want to have Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King on one side, and a losing debater on the other. Help us out here! Throw your comments up at the site.
Secondly, as hoped, we had a lot of discussion at Scarsdale about the MHL Institute, or MHLI, which makes more sense to refer to as the MHL Workshop, of MHLW, given that it will be a one-day affair. We brainstormed an enormous amount of possibilities, enough for a couple of weeks anywhere else, and no doubt we’ll have to pare it down, but in general we’re looking at some basic, general lectures plus breakout sessions, and we’ll try to bring in some local ex-debater college talent. The curriculum will probably follow the numbers signed up. We’ll cover LD and Policy (and maybe a little PF too, I’m not sure). And we’ll probably do it Sept 12 at Bronx Science, but that sort of specificity is a little hard to pin down this early on. I took voluminous notes as we talked, and I’ll try to sort something out over the next couple of weeks so that we can begin planning. I’ll probably put up a page as part of the MHL site to explain everything. Just for the hell of it, I tried creating a registration page at tabroom. I figured, why not? Maybe not the perfect tool for the job, but it is the tool that we’ve got, so I figured, go for it. What I did looks feasible. The real questions revolve around the curriculum, after which we can look at who signs up for what.
Secondly, as hoped, we had a lot of discussion at Scarsdale about the MHL Institute, or MHLI, which makes more sense to refer to as the MHL Workshop, of MHLW, given that it will be a one-day affair. We brainstormed an enormous amount of possibilities, enough for a couple of weeks anywhere else, and no doubt we’ll have to pare it down, but in general we’re looking at some basic, general lectures plus breakout sessions, and we’ll try to bring in some local ex-debater college talent. The curriculum will probably follow the numbers signed up. We’ll cover LD and Policy (and maybe a little PF too, I’m not sure). And we’ll probably do it Sept 12 at Bronx Science, but that sort of specificity is a little hard to pin down this early on. I took voluminous notes as we talked, and I’ll try to sort something out over the next couple of weeks so that we can begin planning. I’ll probably put up a page as part of the MHL site to explain everything. Just for the hell of it, I tried creating a registration page at tabroom. I figured, why not? Maybe not the perfect tool for the job, but it is the tool that we’ve got, so I figured, go for it. What I did looks feasible. The real questions revolve around the curriculum, after which we can look at who signs up for what.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
In which I didn't screw up, we find competitive cucumbering, the web gets wacky, ModNov approaches, and the Legion and Scarsdale rear their ugly heads
I managed last night not to clearly announce the fact of a postponed meeting to the Sailors, which led to rather predictable confusion and, alas, no meeting. Others might blame themselves for this, a la President Obama, but I will fall back on my usual suspects, and blame either O’C or CP. That usually works wonders, and leaves me all fresh and gingery.
Speaking of ginger, (to wit, the Ginger Man), I’m finishing up a listen to the audiobook of Jasper Fforde’s The Fourth Bear. As I am occasionally wont to point out dramatically strong entertainment, I will point out this one, which is the second in a series concentrating on Jack Spratt, a DCI in the NSD (Nursery Crimes Division). It has some of the worst puns in the history of popular fiction, which is in its favor; how many times does one drive along, listening to a novel, laughing merrily on the way to a DJ? I’ve read Fforde books on paper as well. Very entertaining fellow all around. You can do worse.
I dug up my brief on vigilantes. I was going to start working through it last night, but obviously that didn’t happen, so I’ll do it next Tuesday. If Rippin’ doesn’t post it by then, I’ll post it here. As I was working on it I had an interesting riff with Fred R over the use of Wikipedia, which I offered as a source. Three years ago I had banned use of Widipedia as a source among the Sailors. Now, while I still consider it secondary (as is any encyclopedia) and therefore less valuable that a primary source, I have come to consider it acceptable. This is seconded in The Long Tail, where the exact same evolution from “you gotta be kidding” to “see such-and-such an article” is discussed at length. Amazing how time flies on the old interwebs.
CP has finished knocking together the ModNov site, and I’ve started to attack it. With luck, we can go public and begin carving away at the wording of the topic starting next week. No doubt we’ll incorporate ModNov into the MHLI.
The more I think about it, by the way, the more I blame everything that is wrong with LD, The Life and Times on the concept of judge paradigms. I’ll definitely be focusing on this more in the future, and with luck, offering some practical suggestions for change, some of which, by the way, seem to hearken back to the old Legion of Doom. Plus ca change, as the Frenchies say.
And tomorrow is the onset of Scarsdale, which is worth attending if for no other reason than that it is the annual weekend where JV is his most JVish (as all of us are at our own tournaments, I mean, our most quintessential selves, not our most like JV). Plus the warmish weather is icumen in . What more could you ask for?
Speaking of ginger, (to wit, the Ginger Man), I’m finishing up a listen to the audiobook of Jasper Fforde’s The Fourth Bear. As I am occasionally wont to point out dramatically strong entertainment, I will point out this one, which is the second in a series concentrating on Jack Spratt, a DCI in the NSD (Nursery Crimes Division). It has some of the worst puns in the history of popular fiction, which is in its favor; how many times does one drive along, listening to a novel, laughing merrily on the way to a DJ? I’ve read Fforde books on paper as well. Very entertaining fellow all around. You can do worse.
I dug up my brief on vigilantes. I was going to start working through it last night, but obviously that didn’t happen, so I’ll do it next Tuesday. If Rippin’ doesn’t post it by then, I’ll post it here. As I was working on it I had an interesting riff with Fred R over the use of Wikipedia, which I offered as a source. Three years ago I had banned use of Widipedia as a source among the Sailors. Now, while I still consider it secondary (as is any encyclopedia) and therefore less valuable that a primary source, I have come to consider it acceptable. This is seconded in The Long Tail, where the exact same evolution from “you gotta be kidding” to “see such-and-such an article” is discussed at length. Amazing how time flies on the old interwebs.
CP has finished knocking together the ModNov site, and I’ve started to attack it. With luck, we can go public and begin carving away at the wording of the topic starting next week. No doubt we’ll incorporate ModNov into the MHLI.
The more I think about it, by the way, the more I blame everything that is wrong with LD, The Life and Times on the concept of judge paradigms. I’ll definitely be focusing on this more in the future, and with luck, offering some practical suggestions for change, some of which, by the way, seem to hearken back to the old Legion of Doom. Plus ca change, as the Frenchies say.
And tomorrow is the onset of Scarsdale, which is worth attending if for no other reason than that it is the annual weekend where JV is his most JVish (as all of us are at our own tournaments, I mean, our most quintessential selves, not our most like JV). Plus the warmish weather is icumen in . What more could you ask for?
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Modnov, Chumps, Stealth gaps, Rokus, free mp3s, and Johnny Scarsdale we hardly knew ye'
Some things need to be done, and for some reason I’m not doing them.
First, there’s the Modest Novice. We agreed at Lexington to a civil disobedience topic, and now we need to agree on the wording. CP has set up a website, but it doesn’t seem to do anything. Theoretically we should be on there arguing the exact wording, posting support materials, etc. Soon.
Then there’s The Northeast Chumps. I’ll do this tonight at the latest. We did charge O’C with finding cheap trophies, which is like sending a blind person to pick only the purple petunias. The strong thought that Massachusetts participation, expecially PF, relies on low entry fees far outweighs the need to give everyone who enters the room a diamond-studded tiara. I’ll do some math tonight and, with luck, disseminate an invitation by this weekend.
I cancelled last night’s Sailorfest. First of all, they kept saying it was going to snow, and second of all, it’s midterms season, which means no chairs in the classrooms because they take the test in the panopticon section of the building, plus the intended audience for this meeting (mostly plebes) would be feverishly studying rather than watching the legendary matchup of Stealth v Gap. Understandable, but that meant that I goofed off last night, it being suddenly an extra one in my life. Which is why I haven’t been doing the things in my life that need doing. Not that I would have done them anyhow, but you get my drift.
(One thing I did do is post the recent exegesis of the LD rules, and the rules themselves, over on the right in the greatest hits section. So I haven't been totally sleeping on the job.)
I don’t think that I mentioned that I obtained a Roku so that I have yet another way not to watch movies in addition to my enormous albeit seldom exercised Netflix habit. In a better economy I’d also be obtaining either a new Little Elvis (I was thinking of the Aloha From Hawaii Elvis) or maybe a little Asus EEE, but having seen my vast fortune eroded away lately by the winds of the recession, I’m beginning to accept that any computer that works is good enough for the time being. This is far from true, of course, when you’re not merely an operating system behind but also a hardware system (i.e., Intel-based) behind. But, still, with Little Elvis I can keep my iTunes jumping, I can organize photos, I can run tournaments, I can see on Facebook who just got dumped or who’s on “The Amazing Race” (which I still think will suffer by not having the twin brother team of Bietz and O’C, but what do I know). Speaking of Facebook, I am now friends with my DJ corporate VP, which is like being befriended there by your mother. Not that I exactly have anything to hide, but there is a vast disconnect between what I do all day and what I do all the other time, and I can’t imagine what one side might look like to the other side if someone got lost in the vortex.
I enjoyed the picture of JV with the statue of John Scarsdale on WTF, by the way. I didn’t know there was a statue of John Scarsdale on the campus. I didn’t even know there was a John Scarsdale. You learn something new every day.
And, reason number one to give away music: I get all the free mp3 notifications from Amazon, and last night I fell in love with Renee Olstead, which translates into laying out the bucks to download two of her albums. In other words, free music works just like heroin. Once they suck you in, you’re hooked. (You won’t like her, by the way, unless you’re of the Krall-Peyroux persuasion, which I doubt. You look more like a head banger to me. You always have, for that matter, but you knew that.)
First, there’s the Modest Novice. We agreed at Lexington to a civil disobedience topic, and now we need to agree on the wording. CP has set up a website, but it doesn’t seem to do anything. Theoretically we should be on there arguing the exact wording, posting support materials, etc. Soon.
Then there’s The Northeast Chumps. I’ll do this tonight at the latest. We did charge O’C with finding cheap trophies, which is like sending a blind person to pick only the purple petunias. The strong thought that Massachusetts participation, expecially PF, relies on low entry fees far outweighs the need to give everyone who enters the room a diamond-studded tiara. I’ll do some math tonight and, with luck, disseminate an invitation by this weekend.
I cancelled last night’s Sailorfest. First of all, they kept saying it was going to snow, and second of all, it’s midterms season, which means no chairs in the classrooms because they take the test in the panopticon section of the building, plus the intended audience for this meeting (mostly plebes) would be feverishly studying rather than watching the legendary matchup of Stealth v Gap. Understandable, but that meant that I goofed off last night, it being suddenly an extra one in my life. Which is why I haven’t been doing the things in my life that need doing. Not that I would have done them anyhow, but you get my drift.
(One thing I did do is post the recent exegesis of the LD rules, and the rules themselves, over on the right in the greatest hits section. So I haven't been totally sleeping on the job.)
I don’t think that I mentioned that I obtained a Roku so that I have yet another way not to watch movies in addition to my enormous albeit seldom exercised Netflix habit. In a better economy I’d also be obtaining either a new Little Elvis (I was thinking of the Aloha From Hawaii Elvis) or maybe a little Asus EEE, but having seen my vast fortune eroded away lately by the winds of the recession, I’m beginning to accept that any computer that works is good enough for the time being. This is far from true, of course, when you’re not merely an operating system behind but also a hardware system (i.e., Intel-based) behind. But, still, with Little Elvis I can keep my iTunes jumping, I can organize photos, I can run tournaments, I can see on Facebook who just got dumped or who’s on “The Amazing Race” (which I still think will suffer by not having the twin brother team of Bietz and O’C, but what do I know). Speaking of Facebook, I am now friends with my DJ corporate VP, which is like being befriended there by your mother. Not that I exactly have anything to hide, but there is a vast disconnect between what I do all day and what I do all the other time, and I can’t imagine what one side might look like to the other side if someone got lost in the vortex.
I enjoyed the picture of JV with the statue of John Scarsdale on WTF, by the way. I didn’t know there was a statue of John Scarsdale on the campus. I didn’t even know there was a John Scarsdale. You learn something new every day.
And, reason number one to give away music: I get all the free mp3 notifications from Amazon, and last night I fell in love with Renee Olstead, which translates into laying out the bucks to download two of her albums. In other words, free music works just like heroin. Once they suck you in, you’re hooked. (You won’t like her, by the way, unless you’re of the Krall-Peyroux persuasion, which I doubt. You look more like a head banger to me. You always have, for that matter, but you knew that.)
Monday, January 05, 2009
We return to our regularly scheduled programming
All right. Vacation’s over. Back to business.
I’ve put the Modest Novice stuff onto a web page, http://www.jimmenick.com/modnov.html. CP has promised to work up the odd wiki for things like lessons and the like. The plan is to select the topic at Bigle X and then refine the wording and then go for it. Simple as that, once you make your mind up. It was curious, the question brought up in the comment to the previous post, that somehow coaches and upperclassmen might unscrupulously overdo the training and case-writing for the newbies. Curious, I say, because that’s almost the point. Case-writing is a long-term skill, and not the first thing one needs to learn. Fewer people have a fear of the white page than a fear of public speaking, and much less adrenaline is expended in typing than in actually debating. The most important things one learns early on is how to listen, how to take notes, how to respond in a meaningful way, things like that. And, of course, one of the points of the plan is to have a topic that is relevant to the agreed-to early training of novices, so even if a case were handed to the poor newbie, he or she would be learning to draw from the reserve of information underlying it that has been gleaned from early team meetings and readings. Plus that information would inform many other topics in the future. It all connects. (The commentator also assumes that novices aren’t already given cases by their upperclassmen or coaches, which is far from true in my experience. And as I said in my response, something like this is rather standard in the policy world.) Anyhow, the Modest Novice is on track. Toot toot, as they say in railroad circles.
I spent a lot of time over the break doing things like cleaning up my hard drive and polishing my websites, boring stuff that nonetheless needs to be done on occasion. While Little Elvis seems to have, at least as far as the Mac’s Disk Utility is concerned, disk errors beyond one’s wildest imagination and/or repair (I guess I’ll seek out some third-party software), my expedition into the bowels of my stuff did uncover a copy of V2 of Safari, which I immediately installed in place of the latest version, Safari DITW (Dead in the Water). I just seem to need two browsers, logged in as different users, especially with the Feed going. What can I say? Anyhow, things have been perked up a little, in preparation for what I imagine will be a hardware upgrade sometime this year. My Dell is falling apart, and Little E is getting creaky, so what else is there to do? I hate spending the money, but if the Day Job keeps those paychecks coming, I won’t have much choice.
Saturday night we had the annual alumni dinner. It looked somewhat like the judges’ lounge at Bump: quite a fine assortment of former Sailors, if I do say so myself, representing both debaters and Speecho-Americans. As one might expect, the usual subjects were discussed, among them film and music and the like, but at some point we got around to Famous Former Sailors. One story was told that pretty much was untoppable, about someone we will call Sailor X. Sailor X had been, to put it mildly, somewhat problematic as a team member, but somehow he had made it into the ethereal realms of upperclassmanness without really putting in much serious time as either a novice or a JV. He did show up at occasional meetings, however, and at the odd tournament when the spirit moved him. Newcomer McLean, in this particular instance, was a young newbie, fresh as a peach on a Georgia summer morning. McLean had just written his very first cases, and announced this at a meeting. Sailor X, hearing this, told McLean to send them along to him for review, and McLean obliged, hoping to get the wisdom of the ages from experience forged in hard debate labor. But as time passed, no reply was forthcoming from the old veteran to the young Turk. Sailor X has essentially disappeared, until finally showing up on the bus to head to the next tournament. Somehow emboldening himself to the task, McLean asked Sailor X for his opinion of his cases. “Oh, they were fine,” Sailor X replied. “I’ll be running them this weekend.”
Of such are debate legends made.
I’ve put the Modest Novice stuff onto a web page, http://www.jimmenick.com/modnov.html. CP has promised to work up the odd wiki for things like lessons and the like. The plan is to select the topic at Bigle X and then refine the wording and then go for it. Simple as that, once you make your mind up. It was curious, the question brought up in the comment to the previous post, that somehow coaches and upperclassmen might unscrupulously overdo the training and case-writing for the newbies. Curious, I say, because that’s almost the point. Case-writing is a long-term skill, and not the first thing one needs to learn. Fewer people have a fear of the white page than a fear of public speaking, and much less adrenaline is expended in typing than in actually debating. The most important things one learns early on is how to listen, how to take notes, how to respond in a meaningful way, things like that. And, of course, one of the points of the plan is to have a topic that is relevant to the agreed-to early training of novices, so even if a case were handed to the poor newbie, he or she would be learning to draw from the reserve of information underlying it that has been gleaned from early team meetings and readings. Plus that information would inform many other topics in the future. It all connects. (The commentator also assumes that novices aren’t already given cases by their upperclassmen or coaches, which is far from true in my experience. And as I said in my response, something like this is rather standard in the policy world.) Anyhow, the Modest Novice is on track. Toot toot, as they say in railroad circles.
I spent a lot of time over the break doing things like cleaning up my hard drive and polishing my websites, boring stuff that nonetheless needs to be done on occasion. While Little Elvis seems to have, at least as far as the Mac’s Disk Utility is concerned, disk errors beyond one’s wildest imagination and/or repair (I guess I’ll seek out some third-party software), my expedition into the bowels of my stuff did uncover a copy of V2 of Safari, which I immediately installed in place of the latest version, Safari DITW (Dead in the Water). I just seem to need two browsers, logged in as different users, especially with the Feed going. What can I say? Anyhow, things have been perked up a little, in preparation for what I imagine will be a hardware upgrade sometime this year. My Dell is falling apart, and Little E is getting creaky, so what else is there to do? I hate spending the money, but if the Day Job keeps those paychecks coming, I won’t have much choice.
Saturday night we had the annual alumni dinner. It looked somewhat like the judges’ lounge at Bump: quite a fine assortment of former Sailors, if I do say so myself, representing both debaters and Speecho-Americans. As one might expect, the usual subjects were discussed, among them film and music and the like, but at some point we got around to Famous Former Sailors. One story was told that pretty much was untoppable, about someone we will call Sailor X. Sailor X had been, to put it mildly, somewhat problematic as a team member, but somehow he had made it into the ethereal realms of upperclassmanness without really putting in much serious time as either a novice or a JV. He did show up at occasional meetings, however, and at the odd tournament when the spirit moved him. Newcomer McLean, in this particular instance, was a young newbie, fresh as a peach on a Georgia summer morning. McLean had just written his very first cases, and announced this at a meeting. Sailor X, hearing this, told McLean to send them along to him for review, and McLean obliged, hoping to get the wisdom of the ages from experience forged in hard debate labor. But as time passed, no reply was forthcoming from the old veteran to the young Turk. Sailor X has essentially disappeared, until finally showing up on the bus to head to the next tournament. Somehow emboldening himself to the task, McLean asked Sailor X for his opinion of his cases. “Oh, they were fine,” Sailor X replied. “I’ll be running them this weekend.”
Of such are debate legends made.
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