Star Wars, Episode Seven: The Rise of the MJP

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

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

Okay, I got that out of my system.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pups 11, Part 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pups 11: Part Three, The Usual Suspects

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

Fr’instance:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Pups 11: Part Two, On Location

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

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

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

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

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Pups 11: Part One, The Early Years

So, sez you, how was Yale?

Not bad, sez I.

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

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

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

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

To be continued…

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Ave atque vale!

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

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

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

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

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Counting down

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

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

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

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

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

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Together Again!

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

It ain't over till it's over.

Slugs: The Other White Meat

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

I guess I'll turn off Foursquare notifications today.

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

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

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

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

September Song

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

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

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

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

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The Pup Thickens

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

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

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

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A Well-Oiled Machine

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

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

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

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How I Spent My Summer Vacation

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

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

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

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

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

How did you spend your summer vacation?

Bronx Funnies

How To Stay on the Waitlist

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

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

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

Bronx Funnies

Nipping at the Pups

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

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

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

Bronx Funnies

Excelsior, You Meathead!

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

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

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

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

Bronx Funnies

Sept-Oct

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

Remember when LD used to be about philosophy?

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

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

We're back and we're mad!

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

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

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

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

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

Out for the count

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

Off for a week

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

Bronx Funnies

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

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

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

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

Bronx Funnies

Some animals are more equal than others

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bronx Funnies

Bronx Funnies

Enjoy it!

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

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

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

Bronx Funnies

Bronx Funnies

Pups and cats

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

You’re a lot of places today.

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

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

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

Bronx Funnies

Bronx Funnies

Lost weekend

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

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

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

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

Bronx Funnies

Bronx Funnies

Bumpidian scheduling

The other big question this year for Bump is scheduling. Since we have access to the building all day Saturday, when should we start?

I have thought of possibly offering housing to the furthest schools on Friday and then starting at the crack of dawn on Saturday, but the c.o.d. realistically wouldn’t be all that dawnish, given the couple of hours it takes for unhoused folks to travel from what I would consider the unnether regions on Saturday morning. And given that we also have all day Sunday, in a manner of speaking, it would be more hassle than the reward would warrant. So, a later start on Saturday. I’m figuring four rounds.

8:00 PM
5:00 PM
2:30 PM
12:00 PM
Registration 11-12.

That’s Saturday, working backwards from housing at 10:00 PM.

Then Sunday, there’s two rounds (this is VLD only, of course, from this point on). I’m still contemplating the concept of these last two, rds 5 and 6, being bracketed at rd 5, i.e., lagging round 6. This is not to gain any time, but as we’ve discussed earlier, to even the burden of the aff/neg split in the last two rounds. If the presumption is that in any well-matched good-debater round, the neg has an advantage, then intuitively it makes sense that the same pool of well-matched good debaters debate one another on both sides at the end in the fight for the top spots. I know that some folks have pooh-poohed this because of the taint of bad tabbing that goes with lag pairing, but I’m keeping my options open.

In any case, we should get to breaks by 1:00. If I keep the Yes Virginia 7:30 round, which I might to ameliorate travel home for long distancers, make that 12:30. Lag it and it’s 12:00, but let’s stick to worst case because we could have a bunch of folks heading to 8:00 mass next door (requiring flight B placing in round 5). Breaks start at 1:00. 3:30 Octs if we have to flight doubles, 5:00 quarters, 6:00 semis. Not terrible, but even with the whole two days, it wouldn’t look promising for a potential final because it is, after all, Sunday night.

Sunday dinner at India House at 8:00. That’s not bad.

If anyone has comments about any of this, I’d appreciate them. None of it is etched in the proverbial stone.

Bronx Funnies

MJP at Bump

For reasons that are not quite clear to me, when I was cleaning out my mother’s apartment I found a bar of soap labeled Bate’s Motel. Is there something going on with the Aged P that I’m not aware of?

Anyhow, the second big change at Bump will be MJP. Again, this is something we’ve discussed at length on TVFT one way or the other. It’s pretty much the norm at $ircuit tournaments, but if you’ll remember, the very first time I ran it was at Ridge a couple of years ago as an experiment. It worked fine with what I would call a normal pool of judges, meaning that the best judges (best as defined by the field of debaters) seemed to be where they belonged when they belonged there. Granted we could do that same in tab by just paying attention, but this puts power into the hands of the people, so to speak. Community rankings, which I’ve done for a few years, come close, but MJP is closer. I realize that there remain some coaches who are not in favor of it, but if a team doesn’t rank, they’ll just get somebody else’s high ranker, meaning that the judge in question will be one considered strong by at least one of the debaters. To presume that this means a bias against the other debater pushes things a bit. And anyhow, those non-rankers are the ones who always say you should be able to pick up any judge, so, well, pick up this one. I’m also recommending MJP for everyone else, including Monticello; I’ve just set it up for RJT on tabroom.

I’m writing a little bit of the invitation every day or two, when I get a chance. I’ll have to trophy up before the end of the summer, but I am thinking of getting some medals, no doubt enlisting O’C in aid of that. You know how Scrooge McDuck has a big pool of money he likes to dive into? O’C has a big pool of medals and trophies for his swimming enjoyment. What can I say?

I’ve got people signed up for Yale and Bronx, and I have to say, getting the Speecho-American Sailors organized was no easy task. Lots of begging them to tell me what activities they’re in, begging them to sign up for activities actually being offered, etc. They’re less than conversant with the team schedule, which always amazes me given that every other team around here knows about it by heart. Must be something Speecho-American about it. They just don’t think like debaters. That may not be a bad thing, mind you. I’m simply pointing it out.

Speaking of schedules, the plan is to publish BFs at 1:30 and blog posts at 7:30, until I run out of ideas for one or the other. Tally-ho!

Bronx Funnies

Novice Bumping

I started working on the Bump invitation yesterday. The first big change is that there will be no break rounds in the two novice divisions.

Holy Elimination, Batman!

Here’s the thing, and we discussed this at length on TVFT. Bump is the first invitational any novice attends around here. It takes place the second weekend of November, and the likelihood is that all the novices have had, at most, 10 rounds, and more likely, 3 or 6 rounds at most under their young belts. They come to Bump and want to partake in all that Invitational Goodness, but the real point of the tournament ought to be to give them experience. With elims, about two thirds of the field get 5 rounds and then, what? They watch novice rounds? That’s not totally valueless, but still. As Kt said to me this weekend, at her first Invitational, NFA (which was on the Bump weekend, although once upon a time I used to say that Bump was on the NFA weekend), she made it to the break rounds, hit one of the top seeds and was out. Not much gained.

I’m not quite sure how many rounds we can get in, so I’ve left that vague on the invite, but I would imagine that if the LD field is, say, 80, we should be able to get 8 or 9 reasonable rounds in the allotted time. Trophies will go to the top 10 or so, medals to the next whatever, I haven’t quite decided yet, but it would be on a simple scale of wins/speaks, and not much different from the hardware of elims; in other words, we won’t be saving any money here. My guess is that before we get to the end rounds the placements will have mostly been determined, but I can see no great argument for not giving the most rounds to the most people when they’re just starting out.

Anyhow, that is a big change, probably the biggest for the tournament. Since O’C will be running the novice tab again, it will keep him from wandering off too much, so the benefits just keep on coming.

Bronx Funnies

TPO

It is now August. The party is over.

I was away last week, which is why Bronx Funnies went offline for a couple of days. I had my iPad, on which I create the strips, but I haven’t figured out how to port them over from there directly to Blogger. I could post them to Facebook, but to that I say Bah! They belong on CL, if for no other reason than that they cover me when I’m too busy to blog. Can’t complain about that!

The biggest news is that we’ve postponed Bump a day. The Friday on which we would normally start is Veterans’ Day this year, and I hadn’t given it much thought, but last week I heard from the school and they explained that they felt that the school should remain closed—completely—to honor veterans, which is the whole point of its being closed in the first place. I can’t say I disagree with that. Too often we think of holidays not as celebrations or remembrances of those being honored, but simply as a day off. I mean, Presidents’ Day is usually an ad featuring George Washington saying, “I cannot tell a lie: Our prices are insane!” I sort of believe that GW is a little more important than for use as a shill. Or good old Abe, or any other president. Except maybe Nixon. (“Shop with us, because we are not a crook!”) Anyhow, veterans aren’t just these really old guys in wheelchairs that served in War of 1812 and they roll them out once a year. Veterans are, nowadays, former Sailors who became soldiers, young folks serving really far away in really tough situations, or even folks serving close to home but doing service to their country rather than service to themselves. Veterans are also folks my age, lots of whom got a bum deal from fighting a difficult and unpopular war. And people my parents’ age: I was going through my father’s papers as I was settling my mother this spring, and among them were all his old army stuff. He was over in New Guinea during WWII.

Postpone Bump a day to honor these people? Proud to do it.

There will be Bumpian changes, though, because of the date change and because of some other things that we’ve been talking about over the last year. I’ll give them their due in separate posts. Meanwhile I will begin updating the invitation so that it will be ready by the beginning the local school year. And by the time this is posted I will have registered folks for Yale and Jake. If that doesn’t mean the party is over, I don’t know what does.

(Wow. TPO. Now that brings me back...)

Bronx Funnies

Bronx Funnies

Bronx Funnies

Bronx Funnies

See you in the funny papers

There's an app for the iPad called Comic Life. I think they used to give it away with Macs back in the day, but now, as I said, there's an iPad version, and last week it was half-price, and, well, there you are. I spent this week giving it a road test. I am happy with it. I wish now to thank O'C for providing enough content to last until, oh, 2032, give or take a month or two. I won't post them every day, but when the spirit moves me, Bronx Funnies it will be.

Other than that, we're closing in on opening the first tournaments of the year, with both Bronx and Yale getting out of the gate on 8/1. O'C is going for the every-screen-in-the-cineplex-Harry-Potter approach, meaning that if you're not signed up by about twenty minutes after midnight, we'll see you in 2012. CP is going for the you-sign-up-for-the-waitlist approach, which I know others, including Bietz, have done. I'm agnostic on approach, to tell you the truth. One thing is certain, though, the rise of the electronic registration has taken a lot of the mystery out of things. Of course, while registrations may close the minute they open, forensicians themselves are not so efficient. Not yet, anyhow. The Sailor Speecho-Americans are all of the maybe-might persuasion, and few have committed to actual events. But they can't just sign up in general... [Sigh.]

Things at the DJ have heated up so much that I've boiled over, which is uncharacteristic for me, as the VCA well knows. I like to maintain a detached, mellow attitude, but lately I've been reduced to an attached stridency. I'll be taking some days off shortly, and that may help. If not, just try to stay out of my way. JUST TRY!

And on the home front, so to speak, I have finally gone to the movies this year. I think this is the first time, but I don't know anybody who's not running out to see HP7.2. What are we all afraid of that we have to see it practically the minute it comes out? Spoilers? Like we don't all know? The only surprise was that Kaiser Soze was actually Snape. To be honest, I couldn't remember all the details from the book or the last movie about what piece of YKW was where, and what that sword was all about, and the chalice or whatever it was at the bank. But it didn't matter, because as one watched the movie, there was stuff our heroes needed and they were trying to get, and that much was clear, and it didn't really matter why. It was nice to see every actor in England assembled for the finale except, as my daughter has pointed out, Alan Cumming, the only living British thespian who wasn't hired for the series.

Over the next week or two I've really got to get Bump organized. A couple of major changes need to be thought through; if you followed TVFT you may know what some of them are. If so, could you please remind me?

Bronx Funnies

Bronx Funnies

Bronx Funnies

Yes, the hiatus is over

A rare Saturday Morning Post

Ah, Saturday. This being a glorious morning, and since I don't have to go to an MHL or something, I cleaned the inside of my car, something I do once every year whether it needs it or not. I uncovered, among other things, schematics from last year's Big Bronx (which O'C will be sorry to hear I threw away), a pint of blueberries, Altoids, an extension cord, thirty-five cents, a Tiger Wood how-to cassette (golf, that is), and a freshman Speecho-American that I had wondered what had ever happened to him. He was none the worse for wear and I let him loose in the woods behind my house.

Meanwhile, the discussion about the names of the events at Big Bronx continues. In the comments someone pointed out that Student Congress is referred to as Legislative Debate. (Thank God they don't use the US Congress as a model, in which case it would be called Stick Your Finger Up Your You-Know-What Debate.) I stand marginally corrected, since O'C, in one of the 836 messages he's already sent about the upcoming tournament, refers to it as Legislative Debate parentheses Congressional Debate. In any case, I can't speak too knowledgeably about the activity no matter what you call it, having only sat in once or twice for a mere few minutes. My general impression was of a lot of people waving fingers and a lot of judges taking naps, but I could be wrong about this.

On top of that, Oral Interpretation Debate will, apparently, be called Prose & Poetry Debate. I've always felt that e.e. cummings would be a great disad against Keats, and God knows that the Walt Whitman kritik is pretty much unbeatable unless the neg pulls a Dickinson RVI out of his hat.

If I'm not mistaken, once upon a time I wrote a piece of humorous intent about O'C naming every round. The humor must not have clicked, because I hear that this year he actually is naming every round. (It's all because of the bloody Emory key.) Maybe I should do that at Bump, except instead of naming the rounds after people, I'll name them after failed Vice Presidential candidates. The Muskie Tutorial. The Palin Malaprop. The Eagleton Shock Treatment. We'll see. Anyhow, Bobby Darin, Stokely Carmichael, Miss Hong Kong 2007, Robert Moog, John Cryer and Herb Stempel all really did attend Bronx Science. Any one of them would make a fine name for a round. Who wouldn't want to win their Bobby Darin round? How could you hold your head high if you lost your Miss Hong Kong 2007 round? I don't envy O'C the challenge of coming up with the right round names.

Of course, I shouldn't joke about Big Bronx. O'C treats this event more solemnly than Pope Benedict treats Catholicism. Last year he put on hired guards to make sure I didn't sneak any jokes into the schematics, like referring to double octos as SexyEskimos or something, which if you ask me makes as much sense as what he calls it. He's a stickler for tradition, but I don't see him using his own LD topic, which is what they used to do in the not so distant past. Not that I recommend that he do so. It would be some damned Star Wars Trek thing that only he understood, or else it would be a resolution named after some really famous Bronx Science person who's done a lot of resolving in their day. We can live without that.

Coming back

This isn’t going to be easy, but one way or the other I’m going to get back into the debate business.

I like to think that July is an absolute month off, given that I have nothing to do with any camps. There just isn’t all that much happening this time of year if you’re not doing campiness, but it’s not exactly debate-free. First of all, there’s Yale. I got a nice note from the hotel, and by the time I responded maybe three days later, they were already down to thin gruel. You’ve got to move fast these days! Registration opens August 1, and I gather that it will be a rolling process under CP’s management rather than a two-minutes-late-and-you’re-shut-out. One wants an equitable signup system, so I can appreciate this. I'll be sending out my last call to the Sailors shortly, but most of them are signed up.

Even Bigger Bronx is also opening registration on 8/1. O’C is already driving himself crazy, I think, which is always an entertaining prospect. This year he’s adding IEs, apparently because he doesn’t get enough agina from debate events. Or maybe he’ll just call them debate events. He’s always scrupulous about refering to Congress as Congressional Debate. Maybe he’ll do the same with IEs. Humorous Interpretation Debate. Oral Interpretation Debate. Original Oratory Debate. Why not? They have funny names for everything else at that tournament, like sexyeskimos and the like. Might as well do the same for IEs.

Meanwhile, the DJ continues to dominate my existence, but I’m happy to report that the Aged P has settled very nicely into a nearby nursing home and is doing quite well. I think she went in thinking that it was something between Mordor and the Russian gulag, but in actuality, it’s just the providing of the necessary personal care and therapy to bring her back to her old self (no pun intended). It’s good to see her happy and on top of things again. The fact that they only serve spinach once a month seems to have sold her on the place.

Live from WTF!

WTF2011: Schmucks of the Day — Jon Cruz and Jim Menick

July 14, 2011

Each day, we profile two students at the Victory Briefs Institute so you, dear reader, can learn about the debaters from across the country who have joined us here at UCLA. However, we’ve run out of debaters (although we have sent LAPD out to look for them), so today we profile instead a couple of coaches.

Name: Jon Cruz
 School: Bronx Scientology (Location unclear)
 Class: Some
 Coaches: Come and go like fireflies
 NFL Degree: Nth

How did you first get involved in debate?

On learning that there was going to be a gap of sixteen years between the classic Star Wars films and the JarJar Binks (aka the most deservedly underrated George Lukas character except for Howard the Duck), I had nothing better to do, so I signed up for forensics at my high school on Long Island.

What is your proudest achievement in debate thus far?
Turning standard debate ziti into “Foods of the World: Mediterranean.”

What are your hobbies beyond debate?
If you have to ask, you don’t want to know.

What are your main goals for WTF?
Making enough money to buy some really ridiculous Star War thing made out of Legos, or some ridiculous Lego thing made out of Michael Jackson.

What is your favorite thing about camp?
Proximity to Disneyland and Star Tours (damn you, Carpocalypse!)

Name: Jim Menick 
School: Montrose Naval Academy (New Yawk) 
Class: Less than ever after this 
Coaches: Not if he can help it NFL Degree: World’s Worst District Chair

How did you first get involved in debate?
I tried to get my daughter to join the chess team, the football team, ROTC, the Daughters of the American Revolution, SPECTRE, the Benedictines—but no, she had to join the debate team.

What is your proudest achievement in debate thus far?
Convincing Jon Cruz that it would be the end of his debate career if he even considered working for Bronx Science.

What are your hobbies beyond debate?
Litotes, hyperbole, sarcasm, alliteration, onomatopeia, mendacity, synecdoche, carminatives.

What are your main goals for WTF?
More fish, fewer ankle bracelets.

What is your favorite thing about camp?
When everybody dresses up like Liza Minelli and—Oh. You don’t mean that kind of camp…

Off for the Summer?

More or less.

Somebody asked if we'd be doing more TVFTs during the dog days, and I would say probably not. It's not that we take a lot of winding up—we just flip on Skype and you can't shut us up, not no how—but everybody's got other stuff going on at the moment. My new DJ blog has been murder on the free time, such as it was, although I should be able to get everything under control by the beginning of the new season. We are doing a few things in the background like working out the MHL schedule, getting Sailors signed up for the Pups, etc., but little of it is noteworthy. (Remarks that none of what I say is noteworthy are uncalled for!)

So, don't expect much from this quarter for the next month or so. Just go about your business. Nothing to see here! Please move along there.