City of the Angels, Ca — This page has a number of things you should know (and do) prior to arriving at Camp WTF-a-Mucka, plus a number of things you shouldn’t know (or do). No attempt has been made to differentiate between the two, so good luck with that. This summer’s version of Camp W-a-M is our largest this summer. It is very important that people follow all procedures and get all the proper forms in on time, otherwise it will only be the our second largest.
On this page you will find the information you need prior to arriving at C W-a-M. Please make sure you read this page carefully and fill out any forms that are required prior to arrival. We have now said prior to arrival three times. We are not going to say it again, you spalpeen!
You should also check back to WTF Daily for minute-by-minute updates that will add to your confusion, plus maps and directions if you are planning on being dropped off directly on campus instead of being real cool and flying in on your private jet.
SESSION I + Week 3 RESOLUTIONS
The resolution that will be used at Session I is: Resolved: When forced to choose, a just government ought to prioritize universal human rights over its national interest.
The resolution for Week 3 is: Resolved: In the United States, juveniles ought to commit violent felonies just like adults.
While some overachievers may choose to do work prior to camp, there is no requirement at any level. In fact, those overachievers are in serious danger of being shipped to the Gulf to help clean up the oil spill. I mean, if they’re so smart, let’s see how they handle this!
THINGS YOU MUST DO BEFORE YOU ARRIVE (AS IN ASAP; IF YOU ARE NOT A SAP, DON’T BOTHER)
ARRIVAL INFORMATION
Please make sure you arrive prior to arrival. (Okay, that one was unnecessary.) Please fill out the arrival form even if you are not arriving.
COMPETITIVE RECORD FORM
Please make sure you fill out the competitive record form. This form is not about your debate record, but about your ability to fill out forms. How many other camps offer competition in form-filling? Do we give you your money’s worth or what?
MEDICAL RELEASE FORM
Please download and fill out and return the Medical Release Form. Indicate all your allergies, special needs, self doubts, genetic predisposition to criminal activities, etc.
STUDENT SELF-EVALUATION FORM
Please fill out the Self Evaluation Form at least 1 week prior to your arrival to C W-a-F: we want to see how deluded you really are. If you have never done LD Debate before C W-a-F, you still need to fill out the form. Be creative. Don’t claim to have won everything, ever. Somebody might actually read these things, after all.
THINGS TO KNOW FOR CAMP:
- A typical day runs 24 hours (exactly—we do not have a different way of measuring the rotation of the earth than the rest of the planet). We will give at least 90 minutes off for lunch and 90 minutes off for dinner. Breakfast will be served in bed to whomever fills out the most entertaining self-evaluation forms.
- The dining services at UCLA are rated number 1 in the country. This is not a measurement of the high quality of the food but of the poor quality of the dining service rating system. You will be fed up with the options at every meal. They always have vegetarian and vegan options available, but no one will force you to eat them.
- The amount of additional spending money you should bring is dependent on your own spending/eating/gambling habits. We provide 3 meals per day even if you’re not hungry; we will force feed you intravenously if we have to. Some students choose to order food at night, although the food will not necessarily obey those orders. Some labs may walk in to Westwood (about 30 miles distant) to get Starbucks or Ice Cream. Although we really limit our lab leaders from doing this too often because, well, 30 miles is quite a hike, even if we did capitalize Ice Cream for no good reason. There is only 1 meal that is not provided – that is dinner on the Sunday July 18 and Sunday August 14. (Granted, this looks like two meals, but we like to stretch it out with wine pairings.) We will be at the Santa Monica Pier; God knows where the students will be. Students are responsible for their own meals, that is, they have to shop, chop, cook and serve: your mother isn’t on this trip, mister! There is a WMD in the dorms.
- If you are a commuter we will let you know where to be picked up and dropped off a week after camp starts. We have to have UCLA tell us where to go.
- Students are only allowed to leave campus without a staff member ONLY if they are picked up by an adult with prenatal permission. Note the two uses of only in that sentence. We’re only not whistling Dixie here. You should fax signed permission to the last surviving fax machine on the west coast, if you can figure out how to do so on your end.
- Basic linens are provided for students. This includes: Pillow, Pillow case, fitted sheet, flat sheet, blanket, jaunty sports coats, cargo shorts, tidy whites, fitted ball caps. Fancier attire is the responsibility of the students.
- Students will have access to swimming pools, tennis courts, soccer field and the wooden rec center during camp. If we’re lucky, next year we’ll get the concrete rec center.
- Bedrooms are air conditioned with thermostats in each room. That being said, some students prefer to sleep at different temperatures. If you prefer to sleep at a different temperature, then please explain to us what we mean by that.
- If, on the day of arrival, you do not arrive, please call our office right away prior to your non-arrival. We have staff waiting at each terminal. We will need to alert them of the change prior to the change happening, if it does. If it doesn’t, then please don’t bother them with your silly pestering, even if it’s prior to your change not happening.
PACKING LIST
(Each student has different needs while away from home, so if you must bring dried squid, there’s not much we can do about it. These are all things that we recommend students have with them during camp.)
- If you have access to a laptop computer, we STRONGLY, STRONGLY recommend bringing it with you. If it’s a really hot sexy machine, we STRONGLY, STRONGLY recommend that you don’t bring any lock or anything because we have needs too, you know. If all you have is a mainframe IBM, don’t bother, even if you can figure out how to get it on the plane. We have access to two computer labs on campus. These labs do have limited hours and are first-come, first served. NOTE: If you are concerned with your student bringing their expensive laptop you might consider looking at the pictures of your hard-working, honest staff. Would we steal your really hot, sexy machine? Us? Puh-leeze!
- Notebook
- Pens
- Water Bottle
- Water (not provided by the camp; bring both for drinking and washing) - Personal care and toiletry items, especially deodorant, because there’s nothing worse than a smelly debater
- Sweatshirt/light jacket (it often gets as cold as minus thirty centigrade at night)
- Flip Flops (which will begin to teach you the fine art of changing your arguments in mid-contention)
- Sunscreen
- Large towel if you plan on going swimming
- Laundry detergent
- Athletic shoes – the campus is big. There will be ample walking, and lots of laundry lying around.
DO NOT PACK LIST
- Debate clothes. You will not have an occasion in which you will need to dress up.
- Illegal substances, alcohol, cigarettes, etc.; these will be provided by the camp
- A big library of books. We will have plenty for you to work on and read. It will just take up space in your bag. Plus, we want you to discover new stuff to read!
That way, you can pass along your recommendations to us for the rest of the year. - Water guns, water balloons, or other items that lead to tomfoolery.
Tom will be on hand during the summer to provide his own foolery without your help, thank you very much. - Peanuts or snacks containing peanuts (people have allergies to peanuts that can be really sensitive). However, keep this in mind during the season: many a debate round has been won by a debater sneaking a Snickers bar into a round when facing an allergic opponent.
MEDICATIONS
We will have a small refrigerator in the dorm to hold medication. At registration we will collect medication from those who would like to leave it with us; if it’s interesting, we’ll test it and see if it’s the good stuff. While we would strongly suggest that students leave their medication in our office in the dorm to save us the trouble of having to procure our own, we understand some students are perfectly fine remembering, securing and self-administering medication. Roving the streets of Los Angeles in the wee hours to buy illegal “medications,” on the other hand, is frowned upon.
HOW TO REACH US DURING CAMP
During camp we have someone monitoring our phone 24 hours per day, although we only turn it on during tea time in the afternoons, and then only for a couple of minutes to check for messages. If it is not an emergency we strongly recommend calling your child directly. We do like to keep our phone open for emergency situations and for talking up the hotties over at the concurrent cheerleader camp. Our phone number during camp is unlisted, but we will be happy to share it with you for a small fee. You can also email help@CampWTFaMucka.com, but a lot of good that will do you.
Showing posts with label VBD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label VBD. Show all posts
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Oh, what a day to be in Dublin!
Ah, yes. Now I remember. It’s called Camp WTF-a-Mucka. How could I forget something so simple? I did not, however, forget that today is Bloomsday. I’m thinking of banning myself from Apple to celebrate.
And I appreciate CP resolving the baffling question of which NY baseball team to prefer when the last time you saw a NY baseball game the Bambino wasn’t even famous yet. (Actually, this is not true. The DJ had a family day back in the ‘90s, which included tix for the nuclear F plus one hot dog per mouth. You had to buy your own beer: I only bought one. Cost me $258. I’ve never been back.)
There is a new Nostrum up and running, if that is your cup of tea. Not having Tuesday night meetings does free one up nicely for other activities. I’m even thinking of going to the movies, but I have to admit that Hollywood has not been forthcoming with anything to get me off my duff lately. Aside from TS3, which I assume will be the berries, it’s been one stinker after another, and predictably so. I mean, how many of us were champing at the bit for The Prince of Persia, eh? I like the game as much as the next yabbo, and probably got through about 25% of it on more than one platform, but that’s about the extent of it for me. It might have something to do with Jake G as action hero, but maybe not. It may just be, while I like action and adventure and whatnot, I’m getting a little tired of how low the common denominator is vis-à-vis Hollywood. Whatever happened to the thinking man’s action picture? For that matter, whatever happened to the thinking five-year-old’s action picture? Hollywood could solve all its woes at the box office by making better and, dare I say it, original pictures, but that’s not likely to happen anytime soon. I mean, even TS3 does have the 3 after it, but then again, one would be pretty nearsighted to look at Pixar and say that these guys are anything if not original. “Up”?
I’ll leave you with this thought. On one of the roads I regularly traverse, there is a billboard with a message for the ages. Look on this, and tremble. It is an advertisement for two doctors who bill themselves as “The Proctologists You Can Trust.”
Do we dare to consider the proctologists we can’t trust?
And I appreciate CP resolving the baffling question of which NY baseball team to prefer when the last time you saw a NY baseball game the Bambino wasn’t even famous yet. (Actually, this is not true. The DJ had a family day back in the ‘90s, which included tix for the nuclear F plus one hot dog per mouth. You had to buy your own beer: I only bought one. Cost me $258. I’ve never been back.)
There is a new Nostrum up and running, if that is your cup of tea. Not having Tuesday night meetings does free one up nicely for other activities. I’m even thinking of going to the movies, but I have to admit that Hollywood has not been forthcoming with anything to get me off my duff lately. Aside from TS3, which I assume will be the berries, it’s been one stinker after another, and predictably so. I mean, how many of us were champing at the bit for The Prince of Persia, eh? I like the game as much as the next yabbo, and probably got through about 25% of it on more than one platform, but that’s about the extent of it for me. It might have something to do with Jake G as action hero, but maybe not. It may just be, while I like action and adventure and whatnot, I’m getting a little tired of how low the common denominator is vis-à-vis Hollywood. Whatever happened to the thinking man’s action picture? For that matter, whatever happened to the thinking five-year-old’s action picture? Hollywood could solve all its woes at the box office by making better and, dare I say it, original pictures, but that’s not likely to happen anytime soon. I mean, even TS3 does have the 3 after it, but then again, one would be pretty nearsighted to look at Pixar and say that these guys are anything if not original. “Up”?
I’ll leave you with this thought. On one of the roads I regularly traverse, there is a billboard with a message for the ages. Look on this, and tremble. It is an advertisement for two doctors who bill themselves as “The Proctologists You Can Trust.”
Do we dare to consider the proctologists we can’t trust?
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
I'm sorry teacher but zip your lip
It’s probably just me, but I never did figure out, after my one visit there, why the Kansas City airport was so filled with Oz knickknacks. The whole point of Oz, originally, is that it wasn’t Kansas; even the movie got that part right (not that I have anything against the movie—far from it—but it isn’t what we’d call canonical). It’s sort of like the Pilgrims landing in America and opening a gift shop on Plymouth rock to sell England knickknacks. Whatever. I am not in KC myself, of course, although the Panivore is, because I couldn’t possibly take a week off from the DJ for one tournament. I probably take a week off in the aggregate for all the other tournaments I go to, and in the cosmic forensical balance, I don’t think this one is the equal of all the others combined. But, I guess, that’s just me. As religions go, the VCA is well aware that I do not worship at the altar of the NFL. I don’t hate it or anything; it’s not as if I’m marching in front of their doors with a sign saying death to the infidels or whatever. But in our region we’ve got other organizations that do a better, or at least more apt, job of promoting forensics, and I’ll stick with them for the foreseeable future.
Speaking of the DJ, we are moving to new offices next week, and our present offices look like a war zone. Boxes everywhere, books placed on tables in the hopes that rather than letting them be turned them into pizza boxes someone will take them home and read them. I’ve already skimmed the cream of the crop of the crappy ones for future awards, but even a bonanza like this yields only so many stinkers. It’s the good ones that I’m sad about. But I’m already looking forward personally to not buying too many more books in the future, unless they’re lavishly illustrated. Buying them on paper, that is. I’m very happy reading on my iPad, which is a much more satisfying experience than reading on the Touch. As the trope goes, when the iPad came out it I dismissed it as a big Touch, but one learns quickly that a big Touch is quite a joy. I’ve now got all my photographs on it, for instance (some of which need more weeding, I’ve discovered). Once upon a time we put our pictures into shoeboxes and never looked at them again, or albums, and never looked at them again there. It’s a shame. I love looking at photos of places I’ve been. Now I can do it more easily (at least as far back as the purchase of my first digital camera a decade or so ago). And those activities—reading and picture viewing—are just two things of the many that the Pad can do. I carry it with me everywhere, at work and at home. Ah, young love…
By the way, I’m listening to “Right Ho, Jeeves” on my commute these days. Any writer who can create a character named Gussie Fink-Nottle is a writer you just have to love. Performed beautifully on audio by Jonathan Cecil, who’s done a number of Bertie stories, this is heaven on four wheels. Makes me want to get in the car and go to work.
As we navigate our way into summer, we here at CL HQ will probably find ourselves with less to say of interest to the VCA, and we may even occasionally take the odd breather. This means nothing except that we are husbanding our resources for the season to come, so don’t take it askance. Of course, if you’re spending your summer at one of these debate factories like Camp WTF, debate will not end for you, ever, but for most of us, the warm weather is welcome relief. By the time the next school year rolls around, I’ll be ready, but meanwhile it’s summertime, summertime, sum sum summertime…
Speaking of the DJ, we are moving to new offices next week, and our present offices look like a war zone. Boxes everywhere, books placed on tables in the hopes that rather than letting them be turned them into pizza boxes someone will take them home and read them. I’ve already skimmed the cream of the crop of the crappy ones for future awards, but even a bonanza like this yields only so many stinkers. It’s the good ones that I’m sad about. But I’m already looking forward personally to not buying too many more books in the future, unless they’re lavishly illustrated. Buying them on paper, that is. I’m very happy reading on my iPad, which is a much more satisfying experience than reading on the Touch. As the trope goes, when the iPad came out it I dismissed it as a big Touch, but one learns quickly that a big Touch is quite a joy. I’ve now got all my photographs on it, for instance (some of which need more weeding, I’ve discovered). Once upon a time we put our pictures into shoeboxes and never looked at them again, or albums, and never looked at them again there. It’s a shame. I love looking at photos of places I’ve been. Now I can do it more easily (at least as far back as the purchase of my first digital camera a decade or so ago). And those activities—reading and picture viewing—are just two things of the many that the Pad can do. I carry it with me everywhere, at work and at home. Ah, young love…
By the way, I’m listening to “Right Ho, Jeeves” on my commute these days. Any writer who can create a character named Gussie Fink-Nottle is a writer you just have to love. Performed beautifully on audio by Jonathan Cecil, who’s done a number of Bertie stories, this is heaven on four wheels. Makes me want to get in the car and go to work.
As we navigate our way into summer, we here at CL HQ will probably find ourselves with less to say of interest to the VCA, and we may even occasionally take the odd breather. This means nothing except that we are husbanding our resources for the season to come, so don’t take it askance. Of course, if you’re spending your summer at one of these debate factories like Camp WTF, debate will not end for you, ever, but for most of us, the warm weather is welcome relief. By the time the next school year rolls around, I’ll be ready, but meanwhile it’s summertime, summertime, sum sum summertime…
Monday, September 07, 2009
Preparing to play subpar golf, I meditate on OS issues, O'C entropy, shared drives and applied mathematics
I'm hanging around waiting to drive out to golf.
Bigger Elvis is sitting next to me, installing Snow Leopard, which takes forever, of course. I bit the bullet, in other words. But I checked drivers, and I should be okay with printers, and as far as other software, I don't have much, and the thing still has that new-car smell, so I figured, how bad could it be? I'll find out tonight, I guess. Anyhow, I've been religiously backing up, so if there is some dire problem, I'll be set.
This Saturday is the MHL Workshop, provided O'C ever tells me who the instructors are. He claims that places like Camp WTFaMucka don't assign modules until a couple of days after it starts, which may be true but which does not warm the cockles of my particular heart. On the other hand, what does warm the cockles is that now every activity except for novice policy is reasonably large, and there's still more to come. Novice pol may suffer for it being so early in the year; if numbers stay down, we'll can it, but we've still got a few days to find out. If you haven't signed up yet, you might want to do so now.
Oh. Bigger E just booted, although the disk never stopped chugging. Whatever.
Speaking of tech, the People's Champion told me in response to my recent plaintive plea about shared drives that I could set the drives to be read, but it doesn't work like that on Little E, at least. You either set it for sharing drives, or not. No specifying which drives. This is beginning to become interesting (albeit ultimately unimportant). I may do more research, especially since the alternative is biting my nails to the stubs over O'C and the workshop.
Still installing, despite reboot. Time remaining, 33 minutes. I'm leaving in about ten minutes, as soon as I make a sandwich.
Enjoy the weekend (it's been gorgeous here in the NE). Oh, speaking of which, one thing. Although the pieces on WTF are interesting, and may indeed reflect trends, it is more by coincidence than mathematics. Having worked in statistics at the DJ, I can pretty safely say that the samples are way too small for any decent analysis of the TOC beyond the anecdotal. Fun, in other words, but be wary of taking it to the bank. Remember, you've heard this from 100% of the coaches surveyed by this website.
Bigger Elvis is sitting next to me, installing Snow Leopard, which takes forever, of course. I bit the bullet, in other words. But I checked drivers, and I should be okay with printers, and as far as other software, I don't have much, and the thing still has that new-car smell, so I figured, how bad could it be? I'll find out tonight, I guess. Anyhow, I've been religiously backing up, so if there is some dire problem, I'll be set.
This Saturday is the MHL Workshop, provided O'C ever tells me who the instructors are. He claims that places like Camp WTFaMucka don't assign modules until a couple of days after it starts, which may be true but which does not warm the cockles of my particular heart. On the other hand, what does warm the cockles is that now every activity except for novice policy is reasonably large, and there's still more to come. Novice pol may suffer for it being so early in the year; if numbers stay down, we'll can it, but we've still got a few days to find out. If you haven't signed up yet, you might want to do so now.
Oh. Bigger E just booted, although the disk never stopped chugging. Whatever.
Speaking of tech, the People's Champion told me in response to my recent plaintive plea about shared drives that I could set the drives to be read, but it doesn't work like that on Little E, at least. You either set it for sharing drives, or not. No specifying which drives. This is beginning to become interesting (albeit ultimately unimportant). I may do more research, especially since the alternative is biting my nails to the stubs over O'C and the workshop.
Still installing, despite reboot. Time remaining, 33 minutes. I'm leaving in about ten minutes, as soon as I make a sandwich.
Enjoy the weekend (it's been gorgeous here in the NE). Oh, speaking of which, one thing. Although the pieces on WTF are interesting, and may indeed reflect trends, it is more by coincidence than mathematics. Having worked in statistics at the DJ, I can pretty safely say that the samples are way too small for any decent analysis of the TOC beyond the anecdotal. Fun, in other words, but be wary of taking it to the bank. Remember, you've heard this from 100% of the coaches surveyed by this website.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Oh, no!
It's come to this. WTF is now apparently killing its students and leaving them to rot on the campus.
These are tough times we live in.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Dream a little dream, again, etc.
There must be something in the water in Sailorville. I had another dream last night, after seeing the new Harry Potter movie. I dreamt I was driving a new Tesla. Cool, except I’ve never driven a high-performance car before and I was really worried about crashing into the car in front of me when I was parallel parking. Obviously, this dream wasn’t as interesting as dreaming that I was running Big Bronx from my basement. Blame Harry Potter.
For those of you who have been following the Feed (I haven’t checked the stats, so it could be two of you or a million and two) you’ve probably noticed that I’ve fallen into the swing of it pretty well, with a reasonable handful of articles a day. I’m doing something similar for the DJ, only book-oriented, with a Twitter account to announce each posting. It’s just something I like doing, I guess. Silly me, but I get the impression that the interwebs are huge and we could all use a little help finding the good stuff, and as much as I like crowd-sourcing I do not feel that it is enough. But that’s all right. I will start soliciting articles for the Feed, by the way, in the near future (although vacating may slow me down, because when I’m vacating, I like to be electronically vacant, otherwise I might as well stay in the chez basement running Big Jake). Excelsior, you fathead (as Shep—one of my personal heroes—would say).
I will try to wrap up the series on Pffft before I disappear. Obviously what I’m doing is putting down my thoughts in the broadest, unedited approach here first. Then my plan is to boil them down into one single (albeit long) how-to article, an outline for the Sailors for discussions/lectures, and maybe a podcast. I’m almost done with the phase one. All that’s really left is talking about sealing the deal, i.e., being a closer. Easier said than done, maybe, in the world as it is today, where LD 2ARs forgo crystallization in aid of arguing points that have already been argued to death…
I have been getting field reports from WTF Camp Debatamucka in addition to the endlessdrivel updates on their site. The Panivore is out there hearing tales of my judging past, all of which have been improved for narrative purposes. Funny that I remember a lot of rounds going back for generations. For instance, Nadir talked about hitting Ben Schultz, and I remember that round where Ben first hit Nadir at NFA distinctly. Anyhow, at WTF, Dougo Malfoy is referencing the round where I picked him up at TOC when his opponent managed to rebuild Doug’s case in CX. It was rather paradigmatic. If your opponent has a case that is as mathematically elegant and complicated as a moon launch, it probably doesn’t behoove you in CX to request further information on the areas where the math is the most complicated so that the judge can fill in any links he might have missed during the constructive. Other TOC rounds I remember? The coin toss where the tosser I dropped wouldn’t shut up about it. The round where you-know-who brought his mother (all I remember, actually, is his mother). The round where the girl who later went on to greatness blithely and with no intended malice congratulated her opponent on being better than all the other opponents she had crushed. With mutual preferences, mostly I would be relegated to the boondocks, though, of people who didn’t know me well enough to realize that striking me would be better than giving me a C. Whatever. Golden memories, eh? Of course the thing that always comes to mind first with TOC is that it’s always manuring season down there when we arrive. The air is scented with—
Oh well, you get the idea.
For those of you who have been following the Feed (I haven’t checked the stats, so it could be two of you or a million and two) you’ve probably noticed that I’ve fallen into the swing of it pretty well, with a reasonable handful of articles a day. I’m doing something similar for the DJ, only book-oriented, with a Twitter account to announce each posting. It’s just something I like doing, I guess. Silly me, but I get the impression that the interwebs are huge and we could all use a little help finding the good stuff, and as much as I like crowd-sourcing I do not feel that it is enough. But that’s all right. I will start soliciting articles for the Feed, by the way, in the near future (although vacating may slow me down, because when I’m vacating, I like to be electronically vacant, otherwise I might as well stay in the chez basement running Big Jake). Excelsior, you fathead (as Shep—one of my personal heroes—would say).
I will try to wrap up the series on Pffft before I disappear. Obviously what I’m doing is putting down my thoughts in the broadest, unedited approach here first. Then my plan is to boil them down into one single (albeit long) how-to article, an outline for the Sailors for discussions/lectures, and maybe a podcast. I’m almost done with the phase one. All that’s really left is talking about sealing the deal, i.e., being a closer. Easier said than done, maybe, in the world as it is today, where LD 2ARs forgo crystallization in aid of arguing points that have already been argued to death…
I have been getting field reports from WTF Camp Debatamucka in addition to the endless
Oh well, you get the idea.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Absence makes the heart grow fungus
I’m going to be away for a while, with limited computer access, which means that I won’t be posting for a couple of weeks after this Friday (if I make it that far). I’ll try to finish up the PF analysis, which is about the only major thing pending. Feeding will be sadly absent as well. But if you’re a good Do Bee and have everything in your RSS feed, none of this will bother you. (Some of you may recall that the [dreadful] TV show Romper Room classified its audience into Do Bees and Don’t Bees. I just checked in Wikipedia and found that the show ran for over 40 years. Yikes! Those who had any contact with it, of course, are unable, ever, to consider the existence of Sam Duby without a wry, ironic smile.) If you can’t miss me for even this short period, feel free to follow my exploits away from home on Twitter (@jimmenick). And if you’re planning on robbing my house, please try not to disturb the house sitter or, for that matter, Tik (pronounced teek), whose vicious streak has sent many a debater packing permanently. (“He bit me!” they cry as they go running out the door. Cat bites debater? Not news. Debater bites cat? Well, that’s probably not news either, considering the nature of most debaters.)
I’d like to say I’ve read every inch of WTF’s coverage of its summer camp, but that would not be truthful on my part. I trust that you can say, or more to the point, not say the same. O’C did note to me privately, by the way, that he realized following this year’s screening that the movie Tron is sort of boring. Sort of boring? Generous praise indeed for one of the great overrated stinkers of the 20th Century. Oh, yeah, we really need that one remade…
The hardest thing about packing for a vacation is deciding what books to bring. Excluding audiobooks, I’m looking at short pieces by Gaiman and this guy you’ve never heard of, Ed McClanahan, plus Wilfred Sheed’s take on the Great American Songbook, and maybe a Jeeves novel. That should hold me, I think. I can always buy more when I’m out there (we're doing the Northwest). I had hoped to be in the middle of Anathem (300 pages and I was still bored, so I stopped) or Against the Day (never even made it to 300) or Infinite Jest (couldn’t find it anywhere in the chez), but what can I say? The second hardest thing about packing for a vacation is deciding what electronic gizmos to bring. To be honest, packing clothes is at the absolute bottom of the list. Given that one year I went away for vacation and forgot to bring any pants, I probably should elevate clothes-packing to a higher priority, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.
I’d like to say I’ve read every inch of WTF’s coverage of its summer camp, but that would not be truthful on my part. I trust that you can say, or more to the point, not say the same. O’C did note to me privately, by the way, that he realized following this year’s screening that the movie Tron is sort of boring. Sort of boring? Generous praise indeed for one of the great overrated stinkers of the 20th Century. Oh, yeah, we really need that one remade…
The hardest thing about packing for a vacation is deciding what books to bring. Excluding audiobooks, I’m looking at short pieces by Gaiman and this guy you’ve never heard of, Ed McClanahan, plus Wilfred Sheed’s take on the Great American Songbook, and maybe a Jeeves novel. That should hold me, I think. I can always buy more when I’m out there (we're doing the Northwest). I had hoped to be in the middle of Anathem (300 pages and I was still bored, so I stopped) or Against the Day (never even made it to 300) or Infinite Jest (couldn’t find it anywhere in the chez), but what can I say? The second hardest thing about packing for a vacation is deciding what electronic gizmos to bring. To be honest, packing clothes is at the absolute bottom of the list. Given that one year I went away for vacation and forgot to bring any pants, I probably should elevate clothes-packing to a higher priority, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
MHL Grand Finale for the smartly attired, WTF photos for the masochists, Feeds for the hungry
Last night I sent out a general announcement about the MHL. First of all, although this was second of all in the actual announcement, we’re going to change the name to the Metro-Hudson League. This does make sense to me, given that we cover the metropolitan and Hudson regions pretty equally. It was O’C’s idea. It means we’ll have to change a few things on the back end, but I don’t think there’s anything too onerous. Secondly, O’C and I, in our attempts to organize next year’s TNC, ultimately came up with a Grand Finale MHL on 4/10, and eliminated the Northeast Chumps. (There’s a whole song and dance about the Chumps that I’ll go into eventually, but now is not the time.) The Grand Finale (O’C wants to call it the Metrofinals, which sounds to me like a final round featuring metrosexuals) will be a one-day hoo-ha for all divisions, including limited varsity in a sort of RR format. Lots of details to iron out, but it looks like fun. I like the idea of ending the MHL season with a bang rather than a whimper.
Meanwhile, for those of you with a serious masochistic streak, you might want to wander over and look at photos of Camp WTF. O’C just posted a couple of thousand of them, representing hour one of the festivities. I love summer.
And I think I’ve actually figured out the Feed now. Given that I’ve been trying different versions since Jimmy Carter was in the White House, it’s probably about time. The Feed page is revised and relatively final at http://coacheanfeed.blogspot.com. There will be nothing in it but articles that I have selected and commented on, with sample text. The automated page (called Midhudson League’s Starred Items, which I paste as a widget here and there) will only reference those articles, and not other, uncurated articles; no more raw, uncommented articles, in other words. I’ll keep pasting that widget in various places as a sort of advertisement for the Feed. The basic Coachean Life page will go back to my ramblings, and will not be fed into the Feed.
In other words, I’m now running two separate companion blogs. One is what I create, the other is what I curate. The former is primarily to amuse myself and to annoy everyone else, the latter is primarily to assist students of the debater persuasion, mostly providing regular deep background on subjects of relevance. I won’t try to cover Policy, which I had been marking up in the raw feed; it’s just too much (unless a Policy article looks relevant to the non-Policy universe).
And that’s enough of Feedism for the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, for those of you with a serious masochistic streak, you might want to wander over and look at photos of Camp WTF. O’C just posted a couple of thousand of them, representing hour one of the festivities. I love summer.
And I think I’ve actually figured out the Feed now. Given that I’ve been trying different versions since Jimmy Carter was in the White House, it’s probably about time. The Feed page is revised and relatively final at http://coacheanfeed.blogspot.com. There will be nothing in it but articles that I have selected and commented on, with sample text. The automated page (called Midhudson League’s Starred Items, which I paste as a widget here and there) will only reference those articles, and not other, uncurated articles; no more raw, uncommented articles, in other words. I’ll keep pasting that widget in various places as a sort of advertisement for the Feed. The basic Coachean Life page will go back to my ramblings, and will not be fed into the Feed.
In other words, I’m now running two separate companion blogs. One is what I create, the other is what I curate. The former is primarily to amuse myself and to annoy everyone else, the latter is primarily to assist students of the debater persuasion, mostly providing regular deep background on subjects of relevance. I won’t try to cover Policy, which I had been marking up in the raw feed; it’s just too much (unless a Policy article looks relevant to the non-Policy universe).
And that’s enough of Feedism for the foreseeable future.
Monday, July 13, 2009
General generalities
Going forward I’m going to put together a more complete analysis of PF than I have so far, just to keep ideas closer together. I’m being a lot windier than I expected. Who knew? I should at least have a cogent approach to case-writing finished in a couple of days. I’ll put disparate pieces together rather than breaking them up day-by-day.
Other items on the agenda:
1. Update the MHL site. The big news on this front is the addition of a late-season one-day tournament, a sort of free-for-all MHL Championships. We’ll have novice and JV as usual, plus Policy and LD RRs. This looks like it could be a lot of fun, and a much better way to end the season than just petering out, as we usually do. I’ll send out details to folks within the next couple of days.
2. I have been working on putting together a listserver for the NYSFL so that members can effectively communicate with the regional directors. I should shortly make this public, which was the goal when we met with the NYSFL folks. Good communication is the starting point of understanding.
3. I need to keep track of every bloody minute of every bloody day of WTF Summer Camp. Thank God they post every bloody thing online, from lectures and labs to which students are actually using the deodorant and, more importantly, which students are not. I would hate to miss even one bloody minute of the action. I just wish they weren’t working on that bloody make-poor-countries-pay-through-the-teeth topic…
4. I’m cleaning up my digital photo collection. This is proving much harder than I had anticipated. I didn’t realize just how disorganized I was in the first place. Why is Prague in WDW, for example? Screwy.
5. Prep for vacation. Coming up soon, which means shutting down CL HQ for a couple of weeks, but don’t worry, you’ll have minute-by-minute updates from WTF to hold you in my absence.
Meanwhile, Feed content is a little more abridged than usual. So it goes. Take advantage of the summer. Read a book that has nothing to do with debate. Something to clear your head. I’ve got a nice pile for my trip, including Wodehouse and Huxtable and some book on the 1889 Paris Expo, plus maybe a Pynchon. That should hold me.
Other items on the agenda:
1. Update the MHL site. The big news on this front is the addition of a late-season one-day tournament, a sort of free-for-all MHL Championships. We’ll have novice and JV as usual, plus Policy and LD RRs. This looks like it could be a lot of fun, and a much better way to end the season than just petering out, as we usually do. I’ll send out details to folks within the next couple of days.
2. I have been working on putting together a listserver for the NYSFL so that members can effectively communicate with the regional directors. I should shortly make this public, which was the goal when we met with the NYSFL folks. Good communication is the starting point of understanding.
3. I need to keep track of every bloody minute of every bloody day of WTF Summer Camp. Thank God they post every bloody thing online, from lectures and labs to which students are actually using the deodorant and, more importantly, which students are not. I would hate to miss even one bloody minute of the action. I just wish they weren’t working on that bloody make-poor-countries-pay-through-the-teeth topic…
4. I’m cleaning up my digital photo collection. This is proving much harder than I had anticipated. I didn’t realize just how disorganized I was in the first place. Why is Prague in WDW, for example? Screwy.
5. Prep for vacation. Coming up soon, which means shutting down CL HQ for a couple of weeks, but don’t worry, you’ll have minute-by-minute updates from WTF to hold you in my absence.
Meanwhile, Feed content is a little more abridged than usual. So it goes. Take advantage of the summer. Read a book that has nothing to do with debate. Something to clear your head. I’ve got a nice pile for my trip, including Wodehouse and Huxtable and some book on the 1889 Paris Expo, plus maybe a Pynchon. That should hold me.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
This is good to know
I just read on WTF that they encourage students at their institute to bring deodorant. I am happy to hear this. It completely changes my thinking on debate institutes.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Exegesis, future planning, Mass Matt's Mac, etc
Here’s how things are working at the moment here.
Feed articles are posted during my lunch hour (I wonder why), with the FEED: in the header. I’m going to start limiting the subject lines after that to a distinct handful, for simplicity’s sake. I will also keep sending these articles to the unremarked Feed (if I can remember to click the appropriate button, which I forget sometimes when I cross-post). In fact, there will probably be a small number of posts in the Feed not carried over here, because they are of marginally less interest, at least insofar as further notation is concerned.
Non-Feed articles are posted in the evening, usually at 7:30. They have their usual unintelligible subject lines, many of which seem to be taken from random email spam. (Feel free to send me your social security number and all your bank information, if the spirit moves you.)
I’ve now gotten information, I think from WTF, on three tournaments for next year, suggesting I poise my fingers over the keyboard to sign up. All right, Yale does require some planning (guessing how many Sailors might want to go, pretending I have a real number when I go through the hell of securing hotel rooms, etc.), but Big Jake? O’C obviously had a little WTF time on his hands, or else he needed that $5K. I was shocked, shocked, to read that he is planning to give awards bigger than the average everyday SUV for a variety of accomplishments. He’s already solicited that I give two speeches at varying moments, not to mention enlisting my tuba playing skills in the legendary Big Bronx 2AR Marching Band. I hear that JV is playing glockenspiel. Should be very entertaining.
(If any more proof were needed that O’C has got time on his hands, in his archaeology mode Our Man in the Bronx discovered that Ewok is distantly related to some guy who won the one-legged novice declamation championships in Ohio in 1942, or something like that. He was mighty proud of this discovery, beaming away in his broadcast text message. Things must be pretty quiet down there in Kaintuck.)
Come hell or high water, my next job is working on Pfffft. I want to document my thoughts and publish them so that others can tear them apart. Give me a day or two. Or three.
And I’ll be terribly disappointed if Mass Matt goes for 15 inches over 13. Size is not everything. If one is lugging the thing around, less is more. If it’s sitting on your desktop 24/7, then more is more. Plus, it’s about $200 extra per square inch. A studio apartment in Manhattan is about $80 a square inch. $200 a square inch? You’re talking penthouse prices. Moving in with Woody Allen. I dunno…
Feed articles are posted during my lunch hour (I wonder why), with the FEED: in the header. I’m going to start limiting the subject lines after that to a distinct handful, for simplicity’s sake. I will also keep sending these articles to the unremarked Feed (if I can remember to click the appropriate button, which I forget sometimes when I cross-post). In fact, there will probably be a small number of posts in the Feed not carried over here, because they are of marginally less interest, at least insofar as further notation is concerned.
Non-Feed articles are posted in the evening, usually at 7:30. They have their usual unintelligible subject lines, many of which seem to be taken from random email spam. (Feel free to send me your social security number and all your bank information, if the spirit moves you.)
I’ve now gotten information, I think from WTF, on three tournaments for next year, suggesting I poise my fingers over the keyboard to sign up. All right, Yale does require some planning (guessing how many Sailors might want to go, pretending I have a real number when I go through the hell of securing hotel rooms, etc.), but Big Jake? O’C obviously had a little WTF time on his hands, or else he needed that $5K. I was shocked, shocked, to read that he is planning to give awards bigger than the average everyday SUV for a variety of accomplishments. He’s already solicited that I give two speeches at varying moments, not to mention enlisting my tuba playing skills in the legendary Big Bronx 2AR Marching Band. I hear that JV is playing glockenspiel. Should be very entertaining.
(If any more proof were needed that O’C has got time on his hands, in his archaeology mode Our Man in the Bronx discovered that Ewok is distantly related to some guy who won the one-legged novice declamation championships in Ohio in 1942, or something like that. He was mighty proud of this discovery, beaming away in his broadcast text message. Things must be pretty quiet down there in Kaintuck.)
Come hell or high water, my next job is working on Pfffft. I want to document my thoughts and publish them so that others can tear them apart. Give me a day or two. Or three.
And I’ll be terribly disappointed if Mass Matt goes for 15 inches over 13. Size is not everything. If one is lugging the thing around, less is more. If it’s sitting on your desktop 24/7, then more is more. Plus, it’s about $200 extra per square inch. A studio apartment in Manhattan is about $80 a square inch. $200 a square inch? You’re talking penthouse prices. Moving in with Woody Allen. I dunno…
Friday, September 05, 2008
Battening down the hatches
Tomorrow is the NYCFL moderators’ meeting down at Iona, Catholic Charlie’s home school. I will be attending despite the hell and high water of hurricane Hanna. Tomorrow is also the first day of the Vassar RR. I had intended to pop up there for a visit, but will not do so in the face of said hell and high water. If O’C were Catholic, maybe things would be different, but since as far as I know he is a practicing agnostic, unless Hanna peters out, I’ll be laying as low as conceivably possible. The prayers of the NYCFL will guide me to my destination in the morning; the prayers of [you know, I can’t recall for the life of me the name of the Vassar football team, so fill in your own Poughkeepsie nickname here] probably just won’t be enough to get me through the storms of the afternoon.
I noticed yesterday that WTF was threatening its annual minute-by-minute coverage again of every round in every debate in the continental U.S., including Alaska to keep the Republicans happy. I always love the descriptions. “3928 debaters were entered, but at the end, only two were left standing.” This strikes me as rather predictable. When a tournament has three people left standing at the end, then the man will have bitten the dog and there will be something to write home about. Although, come to think about it, at the end end there is really only one person left standing, but who am I to tell these folks how to run their business? Wait a minute. I do that all the time. Why should this time be any different?
You may have noticed in the Feed (which, if you ignore, you do at your own intellectual peril) that the PF Debate folks are distributing their Sept brief gratis. I took a brief (no pun intended) look, and they came to the same conclusion I did, that this is just not one of those burning issues. At least the Nukes of October are relevant, since apparently McCain and Obama are also going to be arguing about them (or at the very least misrepresenting each other’s position, which is the political norm in America these days, thank God, otherwise we’d have to vote on the actual merits of the candidates). I have to admit I can’t wait for this bloody election to just happen. McCain’s been running for about a decade now, and I’m tired of him, and Obama’s only been at it a year or so but it feels like a decade, and I’m tired of him too. The only one I’m not tired of is Michael Palin, who was always one of my favorite Pythons and who, I think, would make both a fine Veep and a fine lumberjack. McCain simply couldn’t have made a better choice for the ticket.
I noticed yesterday that WTF was threatening its annual minute-by-minute coverage again of every round in every debate in the continental U.S., including Alaska to keep the Republicans happy. I always love the descriptions. “3928 debaters were entered, but at the end, only two were left standing.” This strikes me as rather predictable. When a tournament has three people left standing at the end, then the man will have bitten the dog and there will be something to write home about. Although, come to think about it, at the end end there is really only one person left standing, but who am I to tell these folks how to run their business? Wait a minute. I do that all the time. Why should this time be any different?
You may have noticed in the Feed (which, if you ignore, you do at your own intellectual peril) that the PF Debate folks are distributing their Sept brief gratis. I took a brief (no pun intended) look, and they came to the same conclusion I did, that this is just not one of those burning issues. At least the Nukes of October are relevant, since apparently McCain and Obama are also going to be arguing about them (or at the very least misrepresenting each other’s position, which is the political norm in America these days, thank God, otherwise we’d have to vote on the actual merits of the candidates). I have to admit I can’t wait for this bloody election to just happen. McCain’s been running for about a decade now, and I’m tired of him, and Obama’s only been at it a year or so but it feels like a decade, and I’m tired of him too. The only one I’m not tired of is Michael Palin, who was always one of my favorite Pythons and who, I think, would make both a fine Veep and a fine lumberjack. McCain simply couldn’t have made a better choice for the ticket.
Friday, August 08, 2008
If this keeps up they're going to be rethinking that five grand a pop...
You know you’re in the summer doldrums when O’C is earning his $5m for articles on what you hope the next topic is going to be. I, for one, simply can’t stand the excitement. I do like seeing the Rippin’ symbol all enlarged like that, though. Reminds me of John Cleese not being a Mason.
I am in the final throes of next year’s plans for the ingestion of news by the Sailors. I will obviously not suggest that people not read the Times as a matter of course, but I will no longer (futilely) require it, or at least (futilely) strongly recommend it. That’s a mug’s game. While I don’t feel in any way differently than I have in the past about the McLuhanesque connection of medium and message—I strongly believe that how stuff gets into our brains affects the stuff itself actually in our brains—I have seen too much data indicating that, well, high school students simply aren’t reading the newspaper, nor are most of them going to read the newspaper. On the other hand, an online expectation is reasonable. My biggest issue has always been the loss of serendipity when one no longer browses the physical paper, but there is certainly other serendipity out there, and let’s face it, what we really need is the core of the current events cannon, not the flakes around the edge.
So I am at the last steps of figuring the plan. I have the Feed pretty much the way I like it, having removed everything but what I think a debater ought to at least glimpse at. This is a combination of articles about rights and identity politics, philosophy, constitutional law and subjects that are perennial in LD resolutions. When the topics are live, I will add germane articles directly concerned with them (both LD and PF). What remains is a final determination of what to do with general news, which I have so far kept to a minimum. Is it enough to suggest that people simply read Today’s Paper at the Times site? Or should I add that material to the Feed? Or create another feed entirely? In aid of keeping both the Feed and my life manageable, I’m tending to the first option. But, as I say, the next week or two I’ll be studying this in depth.
Oh, yeah. One more thing. I am doing this via the Mid-Hudson League site and not my own. I see this as being more than just for Sailors, although they will be the ones I expect to use it unfailingly. So, when I get run over by a bus (the one driven by RJT in a fit of road rage as she heads down to the Meadowlands to give you know who a piece of her Wisconswegian mind), others could conceivably take up the mantle in my absence. Or for that matter collaborate now. I’m nothing if not a community kind of guy.
I am in the final throes of next year’s plans for the ingestion of news by the Sailors. I will obviously not suggest that people not read the Times as a matter of course, but I will no longer (futilely) require it, or at least (futilely) strongly recommend it. That’s a mug’s game. While I don’t feel in any way differently than I have in the past about the McLuhanesque connection of medium and message—I strongly believe that how stuff gets into our brains affects the stuff itself actually in our brains—I have seen too much data indicating that, well, high school students simply aren’t reading the newspaper, nor are most of them going to read the newspaper. On the other hand, an online expectation is reasonable. My biggest issue has always been the loss of serendipity when one no longer browses the physical paper, but there is certainly other serendipity out there, and let’s face it, what we really need is the core of the current events cannon, not the flakes around the edge.
So I am at the last steps of figuring the plan. I have the Feed pretty much the way I like it, having removed everything but what I think a debater ought to at least glimpse at. This is a combination of articles about rights and identity politics, philosophy, constitutional law and subjects that are perennial in LD resolutions. When the topics are live, I will add germane articles directly concerned with them (both LD and PF). What remains is a final determination of what to do with general news, which I have so far kept to a minimum. Is it enough to suggest that people simply read Today’s Paper at the Times site? Or should I add that material to the Feed? Or create another feed entirely? In aid of keeping both the Feed and my life manageable, I’m tending to the first option. But, as I say, the next week or two I’ll be studying this in depth.
Oh, yeah. One more thing. I am doing this via the Mid-Hudson League site and not my own. I see this as being more than just for Sailors, although they will be the ones I expect to use it unfailingly. So, when I get run over by a bus (the one driven by RJT in a fit of road rage as she heads down to the Meadowlands to give you know who a piece of her Wisconswegian mind), others could conceivably take up the mantle in my absence. Or for that matter collaborate now. I’m nothing if not a community kind of guy.
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Publishing 101; Morality 101
The uninonymous Rob suggests in a comment that perhaps there aren’t enough people out there to support The American Debater primarily because the VCA is so small. I’m not sure I follow that logic. And I will point out that the VCA is small compared to some things, but not compared to others. I mean, I’ve got enough soldiers to suggest that, while we can’t necessarily attack Rippin’ full-on, we could do pretty good in a sneak attack, at night, if they forgot to lock the back door on their way out. I’m sure WTF gets much bigger numbers than I do, but that’s because so many people can’t get enough of who’s taking what course from whom at their camp. But above and beyond even that, there are quite a few debaters out there in the country who are served by the problematic Rippin’ to some extent or other but not by any of us bloggers, who represent a rather special niche with collateral interests if not quite convergent opinions. There are thousands of debaters in the country, and a niche publication could be successful on one or two counts, namely, selling advertising and/or selling magazines. All commercial publishing works this way. If someone wants to sell something to the audience being reached, they pay the publication for advertising space. If someone likes the content being published, they buy the publication. Sometimes you make all your money on one side, sometimes you make it all on the other, but usually you make it on a combination of the two. This model works for print, and versions of it are being adopted by web-based publishers. Of course, on the extreme ends are books, which are all content and no ads, and the Pennysaver, which is all ads and no content. Anyhow, I trust that the TAD folks have been working on their marketing plan, and aren’t simply walking off the publishing plank, so to speak. As for Uninonymous Rob’s suggestion that those of his recently graduated ilk ought to be courted by the publication, mebbe, mebbe not. The market would appear to be people in the game, not people who used to be in the game. Focused marketing is very important for a publication, especially starting out. Debating debaters looks like a good start; anyone else would come later. Of course, TAD can correct me if I’m wrong on this.
I made the mistake of going into a pretty good bookstore last night, and emerged weighted down and way less flush. A book I didn’t buy that they had was Moral Clarity, because I was already too far committed to other stuff, but I thumbed through it and it looked great. In the next Amazon order, probably. I’m enjoying The First Word immensely, but I do have to admit that as much as I enjoy theories of linguistics, lately my mind has been circling a lot around issues of morality. The concept of right and wrong, of ethical action, keeps taking me deeper and deeper into issues of epistemology and ontology where I don’t particularly want to go, but at the point where you begin defining terms, i.e., Point A, it’s hard to get around the subjectivity of existence. Nevertheless, if you wish to outline moral imperatives of any sort, no matter how minor, then that subjectivity must be gotten around. The relativistic universe is a difficult one to navigate. I may start writing some of this stuff up, possibly in aid of a podcast. We’ll see.
I made the mistake of going into a pretty good bookstore last night, and emerged weighted down and way less flush. A book I didn’t buy that they had was Moral Clarity, because I was already too far committed to other stuff, but I thumbed through it and it looked great. In the next Amazon order, probably. I’m enjoying The First Word immensely, but I do have to admit that as much as I enjoy theories of linguistics, lately my mind has been circling a lot around issues of morality. The concept of right and wrong, of ethical action, keeps taking me deeper and deeper into issues of epistemology and ontology where I don’t particularly want to go, but at the point where you begin defining terms, i.e., Point A, it’s hard to get around the subjectivity of existence. Nevertheless, if you wish to outline moral imperatives of any sort, no matter how minor, then that subjectivity must be gotten around. The relativistic universe is a difficult one to navigate. I may start writing some of this stuff up, possibly in aid of a podcast. We’ll see.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
The American Debater, and other pastimes
Last night I couldn’t get myself to do anything useful aside from downloading some photographs that looked a lot better while I was taking them, but my personal inertia seems not to be shared by others. The debate world is definitely chugging along like gangbusters.
A while ago I heard from Mahesha Subbaraman of Loquitur about a project he was planning, with which he is now going public. His idea is for a magazine, The American Debater, devoted to high school debate, specifically LD and PF, with a mix of articles about topics, tournaments, tactics, etc. There are, after all, quite a few debaters out there, and while he may not get the same numbers we here at the Day Job generate, there is no reason why he can’t make a going concern out of it. He’ll begin with a website, then if that works out, progress to print (although I wonder if he couldn’t perhaps prosper as a website completely). He may be nuts, but he also may be on to something. There’s certainly room for more material for the community. There’s WTF, of course, but they act more as a communications arena than anything else, plus they have a clearly defined commercial aspect as an underpinning (which, I hasten to point out, I believe they handle quite honorably; O’C wouldn’t be one of my best friends in debate if I thought he was some sort of shyster, unless of course he was cutting me in on the take). There’s NFL, but as far as I know no one has yet been able to figure out their website, although I have noticed that when I click for something specific, I often get some random thing that is almost as good; I’d love to have a talk with them about web semiotics/heuristics some day. Then there are a few of us independents (although to be honest, I’m the only one I know of who publishes with any regularity, much to the dismay of the VCA who would be happy to see me take more days off, but then again I’m a logorrheic kind of person, at least in print). And then there’s the whole vast universe of people who are very interested in this very demanding activity who are being served by none of the above, or at least only marginally served. If you’re interested, you should contact MS; he’s still looking to fill positions both of the web design and editorial persuasions. I think he’s looking to go live in the Fall.
And speaking of Rippin’, apparently the Gods of Wisconsin are looking to have people write up topic analyses for the coming season. I opened the email and gaped at it for a second, then closed it and marked it as unread. As the World’s Worst District Chair, I should get some sort of dispensation from this sort of thing, but as an admitted logorrheic, I’ve got no one to blame but myself. Still, I do tend to be about as extended as I can get, since there is in fact a Day Job already, but I’ll think about it. The more people I can confuse with a misreading of a topic, the happier I will be.
A while ago I heard from Mahesha Subbaraman of Loquitur about a project he was planning, with which he is now going public. His idea is for a magazine, The American Debater, devoted to high school debate, specifically LD and PF, with a mix of articles about topics, tournaments, tactics, etc. There are, after all, quite a few debaters out there, and while he may not get the same numbers we here at the Day Job generate, there is no reason why he can’t make a going concern out of it. He’ll begin with a website, then if that works out, progress to print (although I wonder if he couldn’t perhaps prosper as a website completely). He may be nuts, but he also may be on to something. There’s certainly room for more material for the community. There’s WTF, of course, but they act more as a communications arena than anything else, plus they have a clearly defined commercial aspect as an underpinning (which, I hasten to point out, I believe they handle quite honorably; O’C wouldn’t be one of my best friends in debate if I thought he was some sort of shyster, unless of course he was cutting me in on the take). There’s NFL, but as far as I know no one has yet been able to figure out their website, although I have noticed that when I click for something specific, I often get some random thing that is almost as good; I’d love to have a talk with them about web semiotics/heuristics some day. Then there are a few of us independents (although to be honest, I’m the only one I know of who publishes with any regularity, much to the dismay of the VCA who would be happy to see me take more days off, but then again I’m a logorrheic kind of person, at least in print). And then there’s the whole vast universe of people who are very interested in this very demanding activity who are being served by none of the above, or at least only marginally served. If you’re interested, you should contact MS; he’s still looking to fill positions both of the web design and editorial persuasions. I think he’s looking to go live in the Fall.
And speaking of Rippin’, apparently the Gods of Wisconsin are looking to have people write up topic analyses for the coming season. I opened the email and gaped at it for a second, then closed it and marked it as unread. As the World’s Worst District Chair, I should get some sort of dispensation from this sort of thing, but as an admitted logorrheic, I’ve got no one to blame but myself. Still, I do tend to be about as extended as I can get, since there is in fact a Day Job already, but I’ll think about it. The more people I can confuse with a misreading of a topic, the happier I will be.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Letter from camp
I have heard from my old camp correspondent Herman Melville. As always, I present his epistle unedited.
Dear Mr. Menick:
You are fine. So am I.
Things are winding down here at WTF. This year I was appointed chief confessor, in addition to my previous positions as pizza chef and laundry lieutenant. Let me tell you, it is one dirty business, listening to the sins of debaters. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but the pay is good and the hours, while long, are all spent in a little closet where you can occasionally catch up on your sleep and hide out from the camp officers who might want you to go polish sneakers or something, so I really can’t complain. And some of these debate sins…va-va-VOOM!
But, of course, my vows prevent me from telling you any of them. Tant pis, as they say in various French circles. But I will drop a hint: new in the two is the least of them!
This has been a pretty exciting summer, overall. As you know, we have a three week camp, but we send the ribbon clerks home after two weeks and just hold on to the hardcore for week three. These hardcore classes are conducted entirely in French, which means that no one, including the lecturers, understands them, but that isn’t much different from the classes that were conducted in English, so it’s not that big of a problem. In the first two weeks we tell everyone to argue the resolution and to uphold their values, but in week three we tell them how to really win, which requires spikes, spreads, critiques, and generous pourboires for the adjudicators, not to mention a little baksheesh in the direction of the tab room, a tradition to which I understand you are no stranger yourself [wink wink nudge nudge]. Week three also marks our traditional Camp Wiener Roast; this year the Camp Wiener was Biscotti Abramowitz, a rising junior from a semi-lingual high school in Chicago who, I assured you, tasted delicious slathered in barbecue sauce.
As you know, our camp is near the ocean. In fact, after a minor earthquake, we were even closer to the ocean than we had ever been before. Our staff behaved admirably during this natural semi-disaster, demonstrating to the assembled campers the power of extemporaneous prayer in quite a dramatic fashion. Craven Savage, after it was over, changed his or her name to Moral Naif, but unfortunately had to be taken to the hospital for falling too quickly on his or her knees at the first sign of the apocalypse. Your chum Mr. O’C, on the other hand, was a brick through the whole ugly mess. Or something that sounds very much like that; it was hard to understand what Mr. Don’t Forget You Had Beets for Dinner Last Night was shouting into his bricked iPhone at the time. As for me, I was awarded a Junior G-Man badge by the local constabulary, which just goes to show you that you can’t keep a good man down even a little bit, except for “The Batman,” who at least hasn’t acquired some silly Spider-Manly hyphen yet. One thing about DC, they don’t go throwing perfectly good punctuation around willy-nilly.
Once the summer is over I will be looking for a coaching job on the east coast. So, apparently, will every college freshman who ever wrote an aff in the last four years, so you can expect a lot of people to be knocking on your proverbial door looking for work. You may remember not hiring me last year, or the year before, or, for that matter, the year before that, but I do not necessarily see a pattern there that we need to worry about, so I’ll be scheduling an interview with you probably next week. I look forward to seeing you again.
Your friend,
Herman Melville
WTF Chief Confessor
WTF Pizza Chef
WTF Laundry Lieutenant
Junior G-Man
Dear Mr. Menick:
You are fine. So am I.
Things are winding down here at WTF. This year I was appointed chief confessor, in addition to my previous positions as pizza chef and laundry lieutenant. Let me tell you, it is one dirty business, listening to the sins of debaters. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but the pay is good and the hours, while long, are all spent in a little closet where you can occasionally catch up on your sleep and hide out from the camp officers who might want you to go polish sneakers or something, so I really can’t complain. And some of these debate sins…va-va-VOOM!
But, of course, my vows prevent me from telling you any of them. Tant pis, as they say in various French circles. But I will drop a hint: new in the two is the least of them!
This has been a pretty exciting summer, overall. As you know, we have a three week camp, but we send the ribbon clerks home after two weeks and just hold on to the hardcore for week three. These hardcore classes are conducted entirely in French, which means that no one, including the lecturers, understands them, but that isn’t much different from the classes that were conducted in English, so it’s not that big of a problem. In the first two weeks we tell everyone to argue the resolution and to uphold their values, but in week three we tell them how to really win, which requires spikes, spreads, critiques, and generous pourboires for the adjudicators, not to mention a little baksheesh in the direction of the tab room, a tradition to which I understand you are no stranger yourself [wink wink nudge nudge]. Week three also marks our traditional Camp Wiener Roast; this year the Camp Wiener was Biscotti Abramowitz, a rising junior from a semi-lingual high school in Chicago who, I assured you, tasted delicious slathered in barbecue sauce.
As you know, our camp is near the ocean. In fact, after a minor earthquake, we were even closer to the ocean than we had ever been before. Our staff behaved admirably during this natural semi-disaster, demonstrating to the assembled campers the power of extemporaneous prayer in quite a dramatic fashion. Craven Savage, after it was over, changed his or her name to Moral Naif, but unfortunately had to be taken to the hospital for falling too quickly on his or her knees at the first sign of the apocalypse. Your chum Mr. O’C, on the other hand, was a brick through the whole ugly mess. Or something that sounds very much like that; it was hard to understand what Mr. Don’t Forget You Had Beets for Dinner Last Night was shouting into his bricked iPhone at the time. As for me, I was awarded a Junior G-Man badge by the local constabulary, which just goes to show you that you can’t keep a good man down even a little bit, except for “The Batman,” who at least hasn’t acquired some silly Spider-Manly hyphen yet. One thing about DC, they don’t go throwing perfectly good punctuation around willy-nilly.
Once the summer is over I will be looking for a coaching job on the east coast. So, apparently, will every college freshman who ever wrote an aff in the last four years, so you can expect a lot of people to be knocking on your proverbial door looking for work. You may remember not hiring me last year, or the year before, or, for that matter, the year before that, but I do not necessarily see a pattern there that we need to worry about, so I’ll be scheduling an interview with you probably next week. I look forward to seeing you again.
Your friend,
Herman Melville
WTF Chief Confessor
WTF Pizza Chef
WTF Laundry Lieutenant
Junior G-Man
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
You would have prefered a tornado? / My, aren't we the busy one!
I have spent time in California, and can sympathize with the poor WTFers. The thing about an earthquake, which natives take for granted, is how weird it is. The house is not supposed to shake. Your seat is not supposed to move. Random crockery is not supposed to jump off the mantelpiece. Curiously enough, back in the 80s there was a small quake in NY. I don’t recall where it was located, but in the land of the Sailors it sounded to everyone as if someone had picked up and dropped their basement furnace; the thing took place at about four in the morning, and it was subterranean noise more than movement. As you know, Manhattan is slowly working its way up to Albany; the bad news is that California will be long gone by the time the governor of the Empire State is able to live in Gracie Mansion and not have to commute to work. (FYI: Gracie Mansion is where the NYC mayor lives. Gracey Mansion is where 999 ghosts live. I did have to look up the spelling.)
Anyhow, Earth is a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there. You just can’t count on it to stay put. I do understand, however, that the Old Baudleroo has written a critique of earthquakes, demonstrating that they do not exist. No doubt the WTFers will be running this for Jan-Feb. Again.
I worked on some novice intro material last night, and ended up with a web page that would tell them what to do and link them to what they need to be linked to. The hardest thing was coming up with a tone that wouldn’t scare them away, as in, read this, read that, sign here, print that, watch your brain evaporate, mes etoiles, what have I gotten into? It is difficult for some poor barely pubescent schmegeggie to appear on the team in September fresh from middle school and all of a sudden have to learn everything in about three weeks because your first tournament is coming up so stand up straight and buy a suit and could you get your mother to judge for us? One of the items I’ll be requiring is familiarity with the Feed, which I was poring over last night. I’ve come to realize that it’s rather silly to repost this blog there, so I’ll stop that, although I will keep cross-posting things like CP’s blog, which should get a lot of readership (although for all I know, he’s more popular than I am, in which case, the hell with him, why doesn’t he repost my stuff?). (And I’m sorry, but for the life of me I can’t come up with a good enough juxtaposition of repost and riposte to even marginally get a laugh out of it, so I won’t even bother.) I’ll get to a more detailed discussion of my continuing bout with news and news-reading here shortly. Suffice it to say for now that I’ve given in completely.
In terms of debate, this has been one of my most productive summers, but I have no idea why. It’s been productive in other ways, too. I’ve seen all kinds of art, made all kinds of day trips, learned how to make a perfect caffe con leche, and found a way to keep Tik (pronounced teek) from biting me too often. A year that will go down in history, I’d say. All that’s left is some David Hume, who seems to be way more important than I knew till now, and whom I’ve only dabbled in. Unfortunately I just started The First Word two nights ago, and so far I’m loving it, so it may take a while to get to the Sage of Edinburgh, given that I read books at the rate of about 3 pages a day (except for the Day Job, when I read at about 100 pages an hour). Fortunately I won’t have Scrabulous to distract me anymore, so my productivity should increase threefold.
Anyhow, Earth is a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there. You just can’t count on it to stay put. I do understand, however, that the Old Baudleroo has written a critique of earthquakes, demonstrating that they do not exist. No doubt the WTFers will be running this for Jan-Feb. Again.
I worked on some novice intro material last night, and ended up with a web page that would tell them what to do and link them to what they need to be linked to. The hardest thing was coming up with a tone that wouldn’t scare them away, as in, read this, read that, sign here, print that, watch your brain evaporate, mes etoiles, what have I gotten into? It is difficult for some poor barely pubescent schmegeggie to appear on the team in September fresh from middle school and all of a sudden have to learn everything in about three weeks because your first tournament is coming up so stand up straight and buy a suit and could you get your mother to judge for us? One of the items I’ll be requiring is familiarity with the Feed, which I was poring over last night. I’ve come to realize that it’s rather silly to repost this blog there, so I’ll stop that, although I will keep cross-posting things like CP’s blog, which should get a lot of readership (although for all I know, he’s more popular than I am, in which case, the hell with him, why doesn’t he repost my stuff?). (And I’m sorry, but for the life of me I can’t come up with a good enough juxtaposition of repost and riposte to even marginally get a laugh out of it, so I won’t even bother.) I’ll get to a more detailed discussion of my continuing bout with news and news-reading here shortly. Suffice it to say for now that I’ve given in completely.
In terms of debate, this has been one of my most productive summers, but I have no idea why. It’s been productive in other ways, too. I’ve seen all kinds of art, made all kinds of day trips, learned how to make a perfect caffe con leche, and found a way to keep Tik (pronounced teek) from biting me too often. A year that will go down in history, I’d say. All that’s left is some David Hume, who seems to be way more important than I knew till now, and whom I’ve only dabbled in. Unfortunately I just started The First Word two nights ago, and so far I’m loving it, so it may take a while to get to the Sage of Edinburgh, given that I read books at the rate of about 3 pages a day (except for the Day Job, when I read at about 100 pages an hour). Fortunately I won’t have Scrabulous to distract me anymore, so my productivity should increase threefold.
Monday, July 28, 2008
A great intro to modern art; a free judging mp3 worth every penny of it; the high points of Big Jake 2008
Why a Painting is Like a Pizza: A Guide to Understanding and Enjoying Modern Art by Nancy G. Heller is today’s pick hit. I read this over the weekend and found it easily the best book I’ve seen so far for the lay audience on appreciating modern art (and it does go beyond just, literally, painting). I’ve read a bunch of theory and whatnot, but mostly I’ve acquired my feel for art by going and looking at it, whatever it is, which has to be the starting place for any art appreciation. You have to behold it before you can grok it. Your first reactions to any work will probably be emotional, perhaps an aesthetic enjoyment (or lack thereof) of a work’s beauty, but you can always go further than that if you learn something about the particular work and the artist, including of course the position of the work in its time and place, which is probably different from the time and place you’re seeing it. Fra Angelicas look a lot different on the walls of monasteries than in the harsh light of a museum gallery, Caravaggio means a lot more if you know the art he sprung from, and come to think of it, what will some future generation make of Warhol images of Liza Minnelli, when the first question they will ask is, Who is Liza Minnelli? (The second question may or may not be, Who is Andy Warhol?) Heller’s book starts with easier works and moves toward more difficult ones, all pretty much from the 20th century. Why is Pollock not just random stuff anyone could replicate? What is the point of white on white? Two-dimensional scultptures? What is the composition of a Mondrian? Not only does Heller talk about things that are informative and interesting, but she also writes well, one of those great rarities nowadays. Anyone who is interested in the art portion of our program, or who has suffered through studied Caveman, will get something out of this work. I’m adding it to the recommended list over on the right. If you read no other work about art, read this one.
When I wasn’t reading RSS updates over the weekend from WTF on who was scratching whose chin in their bonus week, also known as the Will It Never End Session, I was recording a lecture on LD judging for new parents. I think I’ve mentioned that giving this lecture in person to Sailor parents has been a project of diminishing returns, and lately we’ve been giving our training hands-on at MHLs and CFLs. Still, it seemed like a good idea to warm people up a bit in preparation for an event, so I put down my normal spiel into an MP3, and put it on the MHL page along with the rest of the how-to-judge materials. There’s not much more we can do, I think, except toss the old folks into the rounds and let the chips fall where they may. If the MP3 doesn’t scare them away, nothing will.
O’C has sent a note that Big Jake registration opens this Friday. He’s also wondering when Bump registration opens. [Sigh.] I figured I’d start attacking our invitation next week, but I don’t expect to open registration until, I don’t know, maybe October. It’s not as if the usual suspects are going to be surprised that we’re having our usual tournament on the usual weekend, at the usual place, with pretty much the usual hoop-di-do, except for the predictable one or two new wrinkles that always seem to be required in an attempt to improve things. Likewise Big Jake will be offering all its usual hoop-di-do, including the March of the Animatronic Traveling Trophies (featuring music especially written by John Philip Sousa for the occasion), the Richard B. Sodikow Look-Alike Contest, the Foods of the Worlds Unite Uprising ("You have nothing to lose but your ketchup"), and the annual highlight, a game of Where’s O’C?, when himself disappears into the bowels of the Jake building for three hours on Saturday afternoon with nothing but a Swiss army knife, a battery-depleted walkie-talkie and a battered VHS tape of Howard the Duck Part 17: Revenge of the Ohioans, and Ryan and Kaz and I throw up our hands and say the hell with it and get a cab down to Midtown for a mojito chugging contest, leaving Joga Zola (their French Pfffft coach) to sort things out while throwing Jiffy Sub sandwiches at anybody who looks at him funny.
Meanwhile I’ve now got 2 LDers, 1 PF team and a Speecho-American in a pear tree lined up for Yale. At this rate, we might have to take 2 cars.
When I wasn’t reading RSS updates over the weekend from WTF on who was scratching whose chin in their bonus week, also known as the Will It Never End Session, I was recording a lecture on LD judging for new parents. I think I’ve mentioned that giving this lecture in person to Sailor parents has been a project of diminishing returns, and lately we’ve been giving our training hands-on at MHLs and CFLs. Still, it seemed like a good idea to warm people up a bit in preparation for an event, so I put down my normal spiel into an MP3, and put it on the MHL page along with the rest of the how-to-judge materials. There’s not much more we can do, I think, except toss the old folks into the rounds and let the chips fall where they may. If the MP3 doesn’t scare them away, nothing will.
O’C has sent a note that Big Jake registration opens this Friday. He’s also wondering when Bump registration opens. [Sigh.] I figured I’d start attacking our invitation next week, but I don’t expect to open registration until, I don’t know, maybe October. It’s not as if the usual suspects are going to be surprised that we’re having our usual tournament on the usual weekend, at the usual place, with pretty much the usual hoop-di-do, except for the predictable one or two new wrinkles that always seem to be required in an attempt to improve things. Likewise Big Jake will be offering all its usual hoop-di-do, including the March of the Animatronic Traveling Trophies (featuring music especially written by John Philip Sousa for the occasion), the Richard B. Sodikow Look-Alike Contest, the Foods of the Worlds Unite Uprising ("You have nothing to lose but your ketchup"), and the annual highlight, a game of Where’s O’C?, when himself disappears into the bowels of the Jake building for three hours on Saturday afternoon with nothing but a Swiss army knife, a battery-depleted walkie-talkie and a battered VHS tape of Howard the Duck Part 17: Revenge of the Ohioans, and Ryan and Kaz and I throw up our hands and say the hell with it and get a cab down to Midtown for a mojito chugging contest, leaving Joga Zola (their French Pfffft coach) to sort things out while throwing Jiffy Sub sandwiches at anybody who looks at him funny.
Meanwhile I’ve now got 2 LDers, 1 PF team and a Speecho-American in a pear tree lined up for Yale. At this rate, we might have to take 2 cars.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Cotton is jumping and the fish are high
I RSS WTF posts into my Google Reader. Anyone else who does this probably feels as I do at this point, that if we were to look out our window and see O’C walking down the street, we’d sic the hounds on him. Jeesh! Lose the modules, Jon. Please. There must be someplace you can post them out of sight of the rest of us. Summer may be quiet, but it’s not that quiet.
Oh, well. Camp must be almost over. Summer’s certainly half over. I’m at the annual point where I think I should redo all my websites, plus I was listening to some folks talking about the E3 convention yesterday and began thinking I should buy a PS3, which definitely means that I need a reality check and a new season. I do seem to be in a minority on this life-goes-on thing with the Sailors, only a couple of whom seem to realize that if they don’t officially sign up for Yale, they won’t be going. Seasons begin in the summer, not in the fall. Greenhill is already almost up and open (although we don’t travel that far, as a general rule), UPenn seems to be in business (with O’C as their godfather ex situ for some reason), and I certainly have Pups hotel rooms (which, it seems, will have very few Sailors in them). Whatever. I’m committed to go no matter what, and it is much easier when there’s literally no chaperoning responsibilities. Still, I can’t really understand why they wouldn’t want to go, it being usually nice weather and good food and all those things that we as a team tend to value way above debate. As I said, oh, well.
On the bright side, there is time to do things that I never seem to get during the season. I feel as if I’ve seen every art exhibit, performance and film imaginable, except for the ones we’re still going to see over the next few weeks. I do especially like the summer for going to the movies, which at one point in my life was practically the only thing I did when I wasn’t working. The easy access of video has to some extent replaced movie-going for all of us, but in many ways this is regrettable. There is a big difference between seeing a film on a giant screen with dozens or even hundreds of strangers and seeing it at home no matter how elaborate your setup is. I saw Star Wars, for instance, on opening day (at a Loews, if I’m not mistaken), somewhere in the 40s off Broadway. This was back when the movie was, indeed, called Star Wars. They gave us all buttons that said, May the Force be With You (and damn, I wish I could find that button) and there were, oh, maybe a thousand of us that afternoon. I’m not quite sure why we were all there. There had been a little advertising for the film, but not that much hype, and this was all pre-internet, and George Lucas was far from any big deal, and SF films were, with a few exceptions, marketplace dogs. I don’t think we really knew what to expect, and then the text roll, and then the Imperial ship flying overhead, and, well, that was what movies were invented for. A thousand of us at once had our jaws drop to the floor. There was cheering when Han Solo turned up at the end (oops, was that a spoiler for the one person left, no doubt unborn, who hasn’t seen the movie yet?). The friend I went with, who was African-American, was pissed off that, as always, the bad guy had to be black. (Really black in this case, and there’s no way that little Ani schmuck kid in the 90s would ever grow up to talk like James Earl Jones. I wish I could talk like James Earl Jones. Who doesn’t?) I mention all of this because, as the Times pointed out yesterday, it seems that every movie out there this summer is a superhero film of one sort or another, all consisting of slam-bang action, some of it traditional SF or fantasy and all of it sprung from traditional SF or fantasy. I can’t imagine seeing The Dark Knight on a small screen, no matter how big that small screen is. There are a couple of moments in the film where there’s a small release-valve laugh as one is rather beaten into the seat by Heath Ledger’s amazing performance. Do you get that shared sense of communal connection at home? I don’t think so, no matter how many people you invite over to watch it with you. All of which takes us conceptually to a McLuhanesque approach to media, where we maintain that a medium by its nature controls our response to its content. McLuhan had that whole hot and cold thing to distinguish various media, but for us it’s enough to say that watching any movie on the big screen with many strangers is a completely different experience than watching that same film on your Nano. Who would argue otherwise? It’s only a small step to insist that, whatever the film, since it is a film, it is best watched as a film in a movie theater. That is what the film experience ought to be, regardless of the content or quality of the film. And I miss that during the year, when I don’t have much time to go to movies. Come Memorial Day and the first of the summer flicks, and I’m ready to dip my toe back in. By September I’ll go see almost anything (except Mamma Mia, which in my book will never have a !, since the day I put an Abba song on my iPod is the day I admit that it’s over).
As I was leaving the theater last night, at around 9:30, I looked over and saw that there were numerous film showings starting as late as 10:30. On a Thursday night. And people were still buying tickets as I was trying to get the soggy popcorn out from where it was stuck between my teeth (our theater has the absolute worst popcorn, and, it being a movie, you’re forced to buy and eat it, which is not true at home, where I never eat popcorn while watching a movie, which means there’s yet another part of the experience that isn’t the same). It’s an amazing world we live in, bub. Absolutely amazing.
Oh, well. Camp must be almost over. Summer’s certainly half over. I’m at the annual point where I think I should redo all my websites, plus I was listening to some folks talking about the E3 convention yesterday and began thinking I should buy a PS3, which definitely means that I need a reality check and a new season. I do seem to be in a minority on this life-goes-on thing with the Sailors, only a couple of whom seem to realize that if they don’t officially sign up for Yale, they won’t be going. Seasons begin in the summer, not in the fall. Greenhill is already almost up and open (although we don’t travel that far, as a general rule), UPenn seems to be in business (with O’C as their godfather ex situ for some reason), and I certainly have Pups hotel rooms (which, it seems, will have very few Sailors in them). Whatever. I’m committed to go no matter what, and it is much easier when there’s literally no chaperoning responsibilities. Still, I can’t really understand why they wouldn’t want to go, it being usually nice weather and good food and all those things that we as a team tend to value way above debate. As I said, oh, well.
On the bright side, there is time to do things that I never seem to get during the season. I feel as if I’ve seen every art exhibit, performance and film imaginable, except for the ones we’re still going to see over the next few weeks. I do especially like the summer for going to the movies, which at one point in my life was practically the only thing I did when I wasn’t working. The easy access of video has to some extent replaced movie-going for all of us, but in many ways this is regrettable. There is a big difference between seeing a film on a giant screen with dozens or even hundreds of strangers and seeing it at home no matter how elaborate your setup is. I saw Star Wars, for instance, on opening day (at a Loews, if I’m not mistaken), somewhere in the 40s off Broadway. This was back when the movie was, indeed, called Star Wars. They gave us all buttons that said, May the Force be With You (and damn, I wish I could find that button) and there were, oh, maybe a thousand of us that afternoon. I’m not quite sure why we were all there. There had been a little advertising for the film, but not that much hype, and this was all pre-internet, and George Lucas was far from any big deal, and SF films were, with a few exceptions, marketplace dogs. I don’t think we really knew what to expect, and then the text roll, and then the Imperial ship flying overhead, and, well, that was what movies were invented for. A thousand of us at once had our jaws drop to the floor. There was cheering when Han Solo turned up at the end (oops, was that a spoiler for the one person left, no doubt unborn, who hasn’t seen the movie yet?). The friend I went with, who was African-American, was pissed off that, as always, the bad guy had to be black. (Really black in this case, and there’s no way that little Ani schmuck kid in the 90s would ever grow up to talk like James Earl Jones. I wish I could talk like James Earl Jones. Who doesn’t?) I mention all of this because, as the Times pointed out yesterday, it seems that every movie out there this summer is a superhero film of one sort or another, all consisting of slam-bang action, some of it traditional SF or fantasy and all of it sprung from traditional SF or fantasy. I can’t imagine seeing The Dark Knight on a small screen, no matter how big that small screen is. There are a couple of moments in the film where there’s a small release-valve laugh as one is rather beaten into the seat by Heath Ledger’s amazing performance. Do you get that shared sense of communal connection at home? I don’t think so, no matter how many people you invite over to watch it with you. All of which takes us conceptually to a McLuhanesque approach to media, where we maintain that a medium by its nature controls our response to its content. McLuhan had that whole hot and cold thing to distinguish various media, but for us it’s enough to say that watching any movie on the big screen with many strangers is a completely different experience than watching that same film on your Nano. Who would argue otherwise? It’s only a small step to insist that, whatever the film, since it is a film, it is best watched as a film in a movie theater. That is what the film experience ought to be, regardless of the content or quality of the film. And I miss that during the year, when I don’t have much time to go to movies. Come Memorial Day and the first of the summer flicks, and I’m ready to dip my toe back in. By September I’ll go see almost anything (except Mamma Mia, which in my book will never have a !, since the day I put an Abba song on my iPod is the day I admit that it’s over).
As I was leaving the theater last night, at around 9:30, I looked over and saw that there were numerous film showings starting as late as 10:30. On a Thursday night. And people were still buying tickets as I was trying to get the soggy popcorn out from where it was stuck between my teeth (our theater has the absolute worst popcorn, and, it being a movie, you’re forced to buy and eat it, which is not true at home, where I never eat popcorn while watching a movie, which means there’s yet another part of the experience that isn’t the same). It’s an amazing world we live in, bub. Absolutely amazing.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Planning; positions; pointless posting
With still more than a month to go before the school year begins, I have already dived (dove? diven?) into next year’s lesson planning with blue pencil in hand, updating and moving things around and generally trying to improve matters for all and sundry. One interesting question is, where to start, exactly. I mean, there’s this small gaggle of novices staring up at you with those big Wall-E eyes, waiting to fall in love with debate or be convinced that this is their ticket to a college one notch up on the scholarship-for-life scale, and there you are knowing that first impressions are lasting impressions, and that if you don’t hook them early, they may run off forever. I have no great answer to this predicament. I do think that explaining the parts of a debate round is not the way to start, any more than explaining how a fuel injector works is the starting point of drivers’ ed. The topic that we are presently debating, whatever it is, will have some appeal, but the upperclassfolk will be talking about it in Prakrit as far as the newbies are concerned, so a little of that is okay but a little is enough. After that, there are the various aspects of ethics and philosophy that are the bread and butter of the activity (have I used enough metaphors in this paragraph yet?) and somewhere in here seems the right place to begin. In the past I’ve kicked off with rights or the social contract. This year I think I’ll kick off with justice. Certainly everybody understands some concept of justice by the time they’re a freshman in high school, so this will both build on and challenge what they already know. It’s a good a starting place as any (until it bombs, and I try something different next year).
This is also the time of year when I begin meditating on next year’s officers. Captaincy has its own weight on any team, and we additionally have appointed Novice Directors (not unusual) and a Hardware Engineer, a unique position which over time has become the most dreaded among the Sailors. Hardware Engineering originally arose from a need to have someone collect trophies for display during Bump, since the school has no permanent hardware case for us. My original hardware engineer having performed this task so well, other tasks were added to his responsibilities, always revolving around a thing of some sort or other that could be considered hardware. This job has evolved over time to include reserving classrooms and submitting bus forms and collecting ballots and, generally, every damned thing nobody really wants to do but that needs to be done. In actuality it is a job of great responsibility that cannot be shirked, and with only a few exceptions, our Hardware Engineers over the years have been young men and women of literal steel who went on to become great captains of industry, soldiers of fortune, and, in a couple of cases, circus roustabouts. I am happy to say that this year the mantle of Hardware Engineering will be taken from the shoulders of the legendary Peanuts, and draped over—
No. I’m not going to spoil the surprise.
I have a couple of other organizational surprises as well. I will save them for the Sailors, who should hear them first in person. And no, I’m not quitting/retiring/entering the old age home. I’m just stirring things up a little bit.
When I haven’t been working on the Cur, I’ve been intensely studying the modules O’C so helpfully posts over at WTF. I’m assuming that he posts these for the participants themselves, and not a waiting, wondering forensics world. Don’t they have a bulletin board there they could pin this stuff on? Buncha cheapskates, if you ask me. Thank God the camp is free—
Oh. It’s not? And I’ve now hung two em dashes? Time to sign off, Magoo.
This is also the time of year when I begin meditating on next year’s officers. Captaincy has its own weight on any team, and we additionally have appointed Novice Directors (not unusual) and a Hardware Engineer, a unique position which over time has become the most dreaded among the Sailors. Hardware Engineering originally arose from a need to have someone collect trophies for display during Bump, since the school has no permanent hardware case for us. My original hardware engineer having performed this task so well, other tasks were added to his responsibilities, always revolving around a thing of some sort or other that could be considered hardware. This job has evolved over time to include reserving classrooms and submitting bus forms and collecting ballots and, generally, every damned thing nobody really wants to do but that needs to be done. In actuality it is a job of great responsibility that cannot be shirked, and with only a few exceptions, our Hardware Engineers over the years have been young men and women of literal steel who went on to become great captains of industry, soldiers of fortune, and, in a couple of cases, circus roustabouts. I am happy to say that this year the mantle of Hardware Engineering will be taken from the shoulders of the legendary Peanuts, and draped over—
No. I’m not going to spoil the surprise.
I have a couple of other organizational surprises as well. I will save them for the Sailors, who should hear them first in person. And no, I’m not quitting/retiring/entering the old age home. I’m just stirring things up a little bit.
When I haven’t been working on the Cur, I’ve been intensely studying the modules O’C so helpfully posts over at WTF. I’m assuming that he posts these for the participants themselves, and not a waiting, wondering forensics world. Don’t they have a bulletin board there they could pin this stuff on? Buncha cheapskates, if you ask me. Thank God the camp is free—
Oh. It’s not? And I’ve now hung two em dashes? Time to sign off, Magoo.
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