Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Moving right along, Criticism #12.5
12 1/2. Discussion of CX on VB, thumbs up. All right, I admit to asking the team to create a VB in a barred circle graphic for me, but I do like discussions like this one. First of all, it demonstrates that most people take CX very seriously, plus it gives food for thought to debaters on what to do with it. But more to the point, I like a place where people can discuss debate theory, which a site like VB can do nicely. On the other hand, I really don't need to know what brand of toothpaste is used by the guy who made it to doubles at the Pago Pago Prep Chowder Society Invitational. But if you want wheat, I guess you have to sort through some chaff. (Has anyone posted the photos yet of the PPPCSI? I understand a lot of people where seen in classrooms wearing suits. I can't wait!)
The eleventh criticism (and a half)
I was wrong. I am big enough to admit it.
11. Carvel: thumbs up. Wally the Whale rules (or, as Elmer Fudd would say, Wally the Whale wules).
11 1/2. Claire. 'Nuff said.
11. Carvel: thumbs up. Wally the Whale rules (or, as Elmer Fudd would say, Wally the Whale wules).
11 1/2. Claire. 'Nuff said.
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Ten criticisms, during an off debate period
The young 'uns are doing midterms this week, which makes me wonder how many will turn up at tonight's meeting. So, if they wish to pass the time not studying and not meeting, they could pursue some of the following.
1. The Last Samurai, thumbs up. Lots of people refuse to see Tom Cruise movies on face, which is a mistake. They should only refuse to see some Tom Cruise movies on face. He's perfectly good in this one, which is a nice sequel to Pacific Overtures in my private little universe. I did not, however, watch the supplemental second disk of extras. Even I draw the line somewhere. My only complaint about the film is that it needed more Billy Connelly.
2. Coffee and Cigarettes, thumbs all over the place. Worth watching, I guess, especially if you're up late nights wondering about RZA and GZA and if your daughter is insane for liking the Ghost Dog soundtrack.
3. Legal Affairs magazine, serious thumbs up to keep the brain juiced. For instance, read this on Intellectual Property: http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/November-December-2004/feature_hunter_novdec04.html
4. NPR online, thumbs way up. For instance, sample Johnny Carson: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4464083
5. The next Robert James Waller novel, thumbs down for anyone who doesn't think they're a cowboy. I just put this one down on my desk. This guy is a little undisciplined, a little interesting, a little terrible, a little cute.
6. The next Trevanian "novel" is nicely thumbs up. No one remembers this guy, who wrote Shibumi, one of my favorite silly thrillers. His autobiographical novel of his youth in Albany is a real wallow. Makes you glad you missed the 30s and the Depression, but if W gets his way economically, we may get to see similar times again soon. Oh dollar on the international market, we hardly knew ye.
7. Under the Tuscan Sun, thumbs way down. Of course, you get to look at the Tuscan scenery, but if you are thinking of suffering through a chickflick for the sake of balancing your Blade collection, look elsewhere.
8. Slow-cooked duck, thumbs up. 325 for 3 hours, 400 for 1/2 hour, thank you Nigella.
9. Red Ranger Came Calling by Berkeley Breathed, thumbs up. Nice kids children book that was sitting on my pile that I read over the snowy weekend.
10. "Men are smarter than women" sez Harvard honcho. Thumbs way up. This is getting more ink than Iraq, Social Security and Brad-Jen combined. I, for one, didn't know men's brains were (proportionately) 16% bigger than women's, as reported by the New York Times. No conversation with a Harvard girl (like Claire) is now complete without a nod toward Larry Summers. I don't think I convinced Claire to rethink her computer science career choice, but with that missing 16%... I don't know. Sounds like trouble to me. Fortunately she can always get her old job back scooping ice cream at Carvel.
1. The Last Samurai, thumbs up. Lots of people refuse to see Tom Cruise movies on face, which is a mistake. They should only refuse to see some Tom Cruise movies on face. He's perfectly good in this one, which is a nice sequel to Pacific Overtures in my private little universe. I did not, however, watch the supplemental second disk of extras. Even I draw the line somewhere. My only complaint about the film is that it needed more Billy Connelly.
2. Coffee and Cigarettes, thumbs all over the place. Worth watching, I guess, especially if you're up late nights wondering about RZA and GZA and if your daughter is insane for liking the Ghost Dog soundtrack.
3. Legal Affairs magazine, serious thumbs up to keep the brain juiced. For instance, read this on Intellectual Property: http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/November-December-2004/feature_hunter_novdec04.html
4. NPR online, thumbs way up. For instance, sample Johnny Carson: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4464083
5. The next Robert James Waller novel, thumbs down for anyone who doesn't think they're a cowboy. I just put this one down on my desk. This guy is a little undisciplined, a little interesting, a little terrible, a little cute.
6. The next Trevanian "novel" is nicely thumbs up. No one remembers this guy, who wrote Shibumi, one of my favorite silly thrillers. His autobiographical novel of his youth in Albany is a real wallow. Makes you glad you missed the 30s and the Depression, but if W gets his way economically, we may get to see similar times again soon. Oh dollar on the international market, we hardly knew ye.
7. Under the Tuscan Sun, thumbs way down. Of course, you get to look at the Tuscan scenery, but if you are thinking of suffering through a chickflick for the sake of balancing your Blade collection, look elsewhere.
8. Slow-cooked duck, thumbs up. 325 for 3 hours, 400 for 1/2 hour, thank you Nigella.
9. Red Ranger Came Calling by Berkeley Breathed, thumbs up. Nice kids children book that was sitting on my pile that I read over the snowy weekend.
10. "Men are smarter than women" sez Harvard honcho. Thumbs way up. This is getting more ink than Iraq, Social Security and Brad-Jen combined. I, for one, didn't know men's brains were (proportionately) 16% bigger than women's, as reported by the New York Times. No conversation with a Harvard girl (like Claire) is now complete without a nod toward Larry Summers. I don't think I convinced Claire to rethink her computer science career choice, but with that missing 16%... I don't know. Sounds like trouble to me. Fortunately she can always get her old job back scooping ice cream at Carvel.
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Great moments in debate
The average weekend is full of them, if you know where to look. Being buried in the tab room often cuts you off from the ebb and the flow of things, but I did manage a couple of magical moments.
For instance, there was the judge who decided to riffle through the teacher's desk. While this is in itself an extraordinary event, in this particular case the teacher happened to be in the room! The judge made an attractive nuisance defense (the drawer was open and looked interesting), followed by a we-always-riffle-through-the-teacher's-desks-in-Texas defense (which is, I guess, a sort of Rehnquistian anti-federalist ploy), followed by the oh-shucks-what's-that-printed-on-the-ceiling defense. Some people are born with a silver foot in their mouth.
Then there was the moment when I went over to see if all the judges had turned up for the novice finals. As I entered the room, Robbie, rather than proceeding with his 1AC, interrupted the proceedings to take a call on his cell phone. Presumably it was his broker, or bookie, or bag man. Hard to tell. Harder too to turn your cell off, when you're expecting a call from your broker, or bookie, or bag man. Then again, maybe it was just Noah calling in with a turn off negative's second contention.
My only hope is that everyone was on the bus when I sent it home Saturday night. I still have a vague sense that someone was left behind. Has anyone seen NoShow lately?
For instance, there was the judge who decided to riffle through the teacher's desk. While this is in itself an extraordinary event, in this particular case the teacher happened to be in the room! The judge made an attractive nuisance defense (the drawer was open and looked interesting), followed by a we-always-riffle-through-the-teacher's-desks-in-Texas defense (which is, I guess, a sort of Rehnquistian anti-federalist ploy), followed by the oh-shucks-what's-that-printed-on-the-ceiling defense. Some people are born with a silver foot in their mouth.
Then there was the moment when I went over to see if all the judges had turned up for the novice finals. As I entered the room, Robbie, rather than proceeding with his 1AC, interrupted the proceedings to take a call on his cell phone. Presumably it was his broker, or bookie, or bag man. Hard to tell. Harder too to turn your cell off, when you're expecting a call from your broker, or bookie, or bag man. Then again, maybe it was just Noah calling in with a turn off negative's second contention.
My only hope is that everyone was on the bus when I sent it home Saturday night. I still have a vague sense that someone was left behind. Has anyone seen NoShow lately?
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
My Keeper's Brother
It was suggested to Robbie last weekend that, in fact, Noah had written his cases.
If they only knew the truth.
I remember back to those so-called days of yore. Noah, as we all knew at the time, was incapable of holding two sequentially coherent thoughts in his head for more than three seconds at a time. He was completely dyslexic (in fact, his mother was very active in DAM, the Mothers Against Dyslexia). And if that wasn't enough, he had a tendency to overpack for short trips, bring every article of clothing he had ever owned even to tournaments where he wasn't staying overnight. I had warned the family that there was no way I could turn this frail wreck into a debater, and suggested that he think about the wrestling team as more suitable to his talents. At that point his mother took me aside and told me about Robbie. "He's only a first grader," she said, "but he really understands Lincoln-Douglas." She surreptitiously handed me some papers. When I read them later, I realized that they were cases, two sides of the current resolution, the best I had ever seen. An affirmative, and a negative, and both of them were true. And they had been written by Robbie, during recess, while the other kids were falling off the jungle gym.
In the following four years, it became progressively harder to hide the fact that Noah's success was based completely on running Robbie's cases. Fortunately no one ever noticed that Noah's knobby fingers were incapable of typing, much less knocking out case after case after case. Robbie used to prep Noah on a daily basis, giving him drills, trying to keep his attention pinned to the topic at hand. It wasn't easy. And there were a couple of times when Noah simply wasn't up to the task, and we substituted Robbie in his place. (This was especially difficult at Glenbrooks, where Robbie, in the third grade at the time, had a lot of difficulty adjusting to the time change, the cold showers at the tournament hotel, and the combination of the names of the coaches running the thing, viz, Whipple and Belch.)
Anyhow, Robbie can now finally come into his own, and no longer has to prop up his degenerate brother. And I for one say, it's about time.
(PS: Noah is now in Israel learning Hebrew so that he can study international law in Jerusalem. How Robbie is managing to both write cases and prop up his degenerate brother in Israel is beyond me, but my guess is, he's doing just that.)
If they only knew the truth.
I remember back to those so-called days of yore. Noah, as we all knew at the time, was incapable of holding two sequentially coherent thoughts in his head for more than three seconds at a time. He was completely dyslexic (in fact, his mother was very active in DAM, the Mothers Against Dyslexia). And if that wasn't enough, he had a tendency to overpack for short trips, bring every article of clothing he had ever owned even to tournaments where he wasn't staying overnight. I had warned the family that there was no way I could turn this frail wreck into a debater, and suggested that he think about the wrestling team as more suitable to his talents. At that point his mother took me aside and told me about Robbie. "He's only a first grader," she said, "but he really understands Lincoln-Douglas." She surreptitiously handed me some papers. When I read them later, I realized that they were cases, two sides of the current resolution, the best I had ever seen. An affirmative, and a negative, and both of them were true. And they had been written by Robbie, during recess, while the other kids were falling off the jungle gym.
In the following four years, it became progressively harder to hide the fact that Noah's success was based completely on running Robbie's cases. Fortunately no one ever noticed that Noah's knobby fingers were incapable of typing, much less knocking out case after case after case. Robbie used to prep Noah on a daily basis, giving him drills, trying to keep his attention pinned to the topic at hand. It wasn't easy. And there were a couple of times when Noah simply wasn't up to the task, and we substituted Robbie in his place. (This was especially difficult at Glenbrooks, where Robbie, in the third grade at the time, had a lot of difficulty adjusting to the time change, the cold showers at the tournament hotel, and the combination of the names of the coaches running the thing, viz, Whipple and Belch.)
Anyhow, Robbie can now finally come into his own, and no longer has to prop up his degenerate brother. And I for one say, it's about time.
(PS: Noah is now in Israel learning Hebrew so that he can study international law in Jerusalem. How Robbie is managing to both write cases and prop up his degenerate brother in Israel is beyond me, but my guess is, he's doing just that.)
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Windows for Nostrumite, V.666
As I've been sorting out the next few weeks of judging and visiting Massachusetts, I touched base with the Nostrumite, who almost didn't make it to return my emails because he is in a state of permanent depression over his recent attempts to upgrade his computer. "I shoulda bought a Mac," he told me glumly. "A couple of weeks ago I got an error that my PC's hard disk was out of space, with marching orders to erase or die, and since then, every day a little death doesn't begin to describe it." You've got to hand it to him: even in the midst of core meltdown, he manages to toss in a Sondheim reference. That's my boy!
He began by eliminating some of the games he never plays anymore, he told me. He has a habit of buying a game, playing it for two hours until he reaches some particular difficulty that will take some clever offense, and then tossing it on the cybernetic ash heap. "I got rid of Age of Mythology, which I never liked, and Age of Empires, which I bought because they said it was just like Age of Mythology, which should have been a warning rather than siren call, but in any case, after that I blew away American McGee's Alice and a few unintellible zip files and a couple of copies of the TRPC software, and I was cooking with gas. Megabyte after megabyte fell like scales before my eyes." Unfortunately, by this point, the machine was slogging away at the speed of a Commodore 64 or Lionel Richie, whichever seems slower to you while sticking roughly to the same metaphor. "My virus definitions were older than a Commodore 64," the Mite said, "or older than Lionel Richie, so I downloaded and installed a new version of Norton. While I was at it, I scraped the bottom for spybots. I really felt as if I was cleaning up dramatically." But he had as yet gotten no increase in speed. Far from it. "So I went for the Big One, and loaded up good old Service Pack 2, which is the Godfather 3 of operating system upgrades." Which solved the problem? "Now it takes me ten minutes to start up, which means I'm afraid to ever turn the machine off." Any plus sides? "Well, once I got into the upgrading mode, I upgraded iTunes so that I could buy the Triplets of Belleville theme song"—that, I will add, was my recommendation to the lad, who fell in love with the tune at first byte—"but then I couldn't offload to the iPod which also needed new software, so I upgraded that, and lost about half my music, that is, anything I had put in with any software other than iTunes. At which point, I would have murdered Commodore Perry, or Sophie Coppola, or anyone else who got in my way."
But the machine was now back to fighting speed? I asked.
"I shoulda bought a Mac," he replied.
It ain't easy, being a Nostrumite.
He began by eliminating some of the games he never plays anymore, he told me. He has a habit of buying a game, playing it for two hours until he reaches some particular difficulty that will take some clever offense, and then tossing it on the cybernetic ash heap. "I got rid of Age of Mythology, which I never liked, and Age of Empires, which I bought because they said it was just like Age of Mythology, which should have been a warning rather than siren call, but in any case, after that I blew away American McGee's Alice and a few unintellible zip files and a couple of copies of the TRPC software, and I was cooking with gas. Megabyte after megabyte fell like scales before my eyes." Unfortunately, by this point, the machine was slogging away at the speed of a Commodore 64 or Lionel Richie, whichever seems slower to you while sticking roughly to the same metaphor. "My virus definitions were older than a Commodore 64," the Mite said, "or older than Lionel Richie, so I downloaded and installed a new version of Norton. While I was at it, I scraped the bottom for spybots. I really felt as if I was cleaning up dramatically." But he had as yet gotten no increase in speed. Far from it. "So I went for the Big One, and loaded up good old Service Pack 2, which is the Godfather 3 of operating system upgrades." Which solved the problem? "Now it takes me ten minutes to start up, which means I'm afraid to ever turn the machine off." Any plus sides? "Well, once I got into the upgrading mode, I upgraded iTunes so that I could buy the Triplets of Belleville theme song"—that, I will add, was my recommendation to the lad, who fell in love with the tune at first byte—"but then I couldn't offload to the iPod which also needed new software, so I upgraded that, and lost about half my music, that is, anything I had put in with any software other than iTunes. At which point, I would have murdered Commodore Perry, or Sophie Coppola, or anyone else who got in my way."
But the machine was now back to fighting speed? I asked.
"I shoulda bought a Mac," he replied.
It ain't easy, being a Nostrumite.
Monday, January 03, 2005
Ten criticisms, following the Christmas break
1. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell: Thumbs down. You read 800 pages waiting for the story to get started. The author has a creamy, readable style, but substance here is sadly lacking. If you're looking for Harry Potter for grownups, read Harry Potter.
2. Finding Neverland: Thumbs up, provided you attend with the requisite three hankies. Still waiting for the mythical bad Johnny Depp movie.
3. Triplets of Belleville: Thumbs up for the theme song alone, much less the curious animation style. No Spirited Away, but a winner.
4. Robert Caro: Thumbs up for anything. This man cannot write a bad word. I'm back in Robert Moses land again. What a bastid!
5. The new Pacific Overtures: TU, almost as good as the original (high praise indeed). But not as good, when all is said and done. Nevertheless, clever staging, and with that score...
6. Avenue Q: TU, although you never know whether to look at the puppets or the people.
7. The Terminal: TU. Which is more awesome, Hanks's talent or the built-for-this-movie set?
8. Bubba Ho-Tep: Reluctant thumbs down. Once you know that Elvis and JFK (who has been turned black) are living in a nursing home, you can write the script yourself. Too bad. Should have been a lot funnier.
9. Postmodernism: TD. The "lecture" continues apace, now that I've caught up a little with M. Foucault. My problem? I can't get past relativism. Anyone claiming that there is no objective reality needs to be hit over the head with a golf club.
10. Speaking of which, Golf: TD. I got worse this year. The team tried, getting me a great playing lesson. I played exactly one good round the whole season, the very last one, in October. At which point I grabbed the clubs out of the car and hid them in the basement. Unfortunately, I will no doubt remember where they are when April starts piercing at the old root.
So as you can see, my life is dull. Things seem to be jumping on the debate websites, though. They even had a Round Robin New Year's Eve. Can those forensicians celebrate or what?
2. Finding Neverland: Thumbs up, provided you attend with the requisite three hankies. Still waiting for the mythical bad Johnny Depp movie.
3. Triplets of Belleville: Thumbs up for the theme song alone, much less the curious animation style. No Spirited Away, but a winner.
4. Robert Caro: Thumbs up for anything. This man cannot write a bad word. I'm back in Robert Moses land again. What a bastid!
5. The new Pacific Overtures: TU, almost as good as the original (high praise indeed). But not as good, when all is said and done. Nevertheless, clever staging, and with that score...
6. Avenue Q: TU, although you never know whether to look at the puppets or the people.
7. The Terminal: TU. Which is more awesome, Hanks's talent or the built-for-this-movie set?
8. Bubba Ho-Tep: Reluctant thumbs down. Once you know that Elvis and JFK (who has been turned black) are living in a nursing home, you can write the script yourself. Too bad. Should have been a lot funnier.
9. Postmodernism: TD. The "lecture" continues apace, now that I've caught up a little with M. Foucault. My problem? I can't get past relativism. Anyone claiming that there is no objective reality needs to be hit over the head with a golf club.
10. Speaking of which, Golf: TD. I got worse this year. The team tried, getting me a great playing lesson. I played exactly one good round the whole season, the very last one, in October. At which point I grabbed the clubs out of the car and hid them in the basement. Unfortunately, I will no doubt remember where they are when April starts piercing at the old root.
So as you can see, my life is dull. Things seem to be jumping on the debate websites, though. They even had a Round Robin New Year's Eve. Can those forensicians celebrate or what?
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Well, that was fun...
I just spent quite a bit of time not creating a new entry here, thanks to my new Mac, new operating system and new browser. I hate losing my cookies...
As we go softly into the half year mark—yes, it's the half year; for those of you who have been waiting for the season to start, Adios, amigos—I am struck by what has become the rather bizarre spectacle of LD as, well, bizarre spectacle. The last I heard, and I haven't seen much evidence to the contrary, forensics is an activity for a fairly, shall we say, select few. These select few are unique among their peers. They probably find few people in the old home room willing to take on the subject of why the name Etzione should never be uttered aloud, even if you occasionally agree with him. They do not now, nor have they ever, hung out in a mall. They own more dress suits than the average Supreme Court justice. They travel in the company of coaches who, in a word, are adults with nothing better to do both on Fridays and Saturdays than hang around with teenagers who shun Etzione, malls and casual clothes.
Having been once a debater and being presently a coach, I include myself in the above criticisms, so even if you do take it personally, welcome to the club.
So here's these select few, spending their weekends going from debate to debate, little verbal warriers on a quest for nothing more than better and better verbal wars. In the normal universe, they would travel in the dark, able to recognize each other in bus terminals and fast food outlets only by the twirling of a pen caught out of the corner of an eye. Their existence would be known only to their parents who wonder where they are this time, and each other (and it's dubious whether their parents, or each other, really ARE aware of their existence), but for one thing: The web site that dare not speak its name.
All right, I won't speak its name. You might, but I would stumble over the words. I, for one, remember when this little outfit was known entirely for writing terrifically bad case positions and selling them to unexpecting or lazy or unexpecting and lazy debaters who couldn't come up with their own material. Now, they provide real-time peeks into that fascinating world of debate, reporting online from, hot off the presses, drop everything and check this out Martha, places like (yes, yes, tell us!!) HENDRICK HUDSON. Can you imagine that? Live reporting from Montrose, New York. Wow. Montrose will never be the same. There's stars on this site, too. Famous people, with glimpses into their famous lives, their minds, their cribs (oh, the irony of that word in this context). Hell, I was one of those people, now forgotten in the continuing wave of newer famous people.
The fiction that the site supports is the one that there is a fraternity of national debaters worthy of immediate knowledge. Pictures of the little verbal warriers sitting around in cafeterias. Interviews with them. Minute-by-minute reports on how they're doing. And my personal favorite, photographs of schematics as they are released. Thank God for the Internet.
Of course, I don't blame the subjects of this site for the site's content. And to be honest, I don't find the site's content particularly bad, in the moral sense. I guess it boils down to everyone needing to be a member of something, that human urge to huddle. The groups we huddle in tend to be collectively identifiable as the groups that are just right for us as huddlers. The hundred or so people who comprise "the national circuit"—teams with enough money to go out of state to tournaments—stand in for the thousands of local forensicians who simply plod from local event to local event, that army of real world faceless gray debaters, if you will. This site presents a few real faces, removing the gray and showing them in living color. Oh, to be a celebrity. My only fear, and my warning, is that you don't take this stuff too seriously. Because, my friend, here's the dirty little secret behind the whole enterprise: it's only high school debating. It's an extracurricular activity with a great academic benefit (obviously, or people like me wouldn't bother with it), but, to put it bluntly, it is not important. Web sites like the one at hand make it seem way more important than it is. But it isn't. It's fun, and you should learn a few things (to paraphrase the wise Mr. JG, so recently interviewed therein), but that's about the end of it. Then you get senioritis (maybe) and then you graduate (probably) and then you forget you ever debated (if you're lucky, except when I need to hire you to judge, at which point you're only in it for the money).
So, as we enter this holiday season (some of us with Saturday's generously ecumenical prayer of Sister Raimonde still ringing through our brain), I ask merely that you remind yourself what we're fighting for. We are weird little warriers in a tiny universe, doing our best to sharpen our brains (an intrinsically good thing). And if we become the best weird little warrier there is, and it could happen, we will still be just a weird little warrier.
In other words, keep a sense of perspective.
As we go softly into the half year mark—yes, it's the half year; for those of you who have been waiting for the season to start, Adios, amigos—I am struck by what has become the rather bizarre spectacle of LD as, well, bizarre spectacle. The last I heard, and I haven't seen much evidence to the contrary, forensics is an activity for a fairly, shall we say, select few. These select few are unique among their peers. They probably find few people in the old home room willing to take on the subject of why the name Etzione should never be uttered aloud, even if you occasionally agree with him. They do not now, nor have they ever, hung out in a mall. They own more dress suits than the average Supreme Court justice. They travel in the company of coaches who, in a word, are adults with nothing better to do both on Fridays and Saturdays than hang around with teenagers who shun Etzione, malls and casual clothes.
Having been once a debater and being presently a coach, I include myself in the above criticisms, so even if you do take it personally, welcome to the club.
So here's these select few, spending their weekends going from debate to debate, little verbal warriers on a quest for nothing more than better and better verbal wars. In the normal universe, they would travel in the dark, able to recognize each other in bus terminals and fast food outlets only by the twirling of a pen caught out of the corner of an eye. Their existence would be known only to their parents who wonder where they are this time, and each other (and it's dubious whether their parents, or each other, really ARE aware of their existence), but for one thing: The web site that dare not speak its name.
All right, I won't speak its name. You might, but I would stumble over the words. I, for one, remember when this little outfit was known entirely for writing terrifically bad case positions and selling them to unexpecting or lazy or unexpecting and lazy debaters who couldn't come up with their own material. Now, they provide real-time peeks into that fascinating world of debate, reporting online from, hot off the presses, drop everything and check this out Martha, places like (yes, yes, tell us!!) HENDRICK HUDSON. Can you imagine that? Live reporting from Montrose, New York. Wow. Montrose will never be the same. There's stars on this site, too. Famous people, with glimpses into their famous lives, their minds, their cribs (oh, the irony of that word in this context). Hell, I was one of those people, now forgotten in the continuing wave of newer famous people.
The fiction that the site supports is the one that there is a fraternity of national debaters worthy of immediate knowledge. Pictures of the little verbal warriers sitting around in cafeterias. Interviews with them. Minute-by-minute reports on how they're doing. And my personal favorite, photographs of schematics as they are released. Thank God for the Internet.
Of course, I don't blame the subjects of this site for the site's content. And to be honest, I don't find the site's content particularly bad, in the moral sense. I guess it boils down to everyone needing to be a member of something, that human urge to huddle. The groups we huddle in tend to be collectively identifiable as the groups that are just right for us as huddlers. The hundred or so people who comprise "the national circuit"—teams with enough money to go out of state to tournaments—stand in for the thousands of local forensicians who simply plod from local event to local event, that army of real world faceless gray debaters, if you will. This site presents a few real faces, removing the gray and showing them in living color. Oh, to be a celebrity. My only fear, and my warning, is that you don't take this stuff too seriously. Because, my friend, here's the dirty little secret behind the whole enterprise: it's only high school debating. It's an extracurricular activity with a great academic benefit (obviously, or people like me wouldn't bother with it), but, to put it bluntly, it is not important. Web sites like the one at hand make it seem way more important than it is. But it isn't. It's fun, and you should learn a few things (to paraphrase the wise Mr. JG, so recently interviewed therein), but that's about the end of it. Then you get senioritis (maybe) and then you graduate (probably) and then you forget you ever debated (if you're lucky, except when I need to hire you to judge, at which point you're only in it for the money).
So, as we enter this holiday season (some of us with Saturday's generously ecumenical prayer of Sister Raimonde still ringing through our brain), I ask merely that you remind yourself what we're fighting for. We are weird little warriers in a tiny universe, doing our best to sharpen our brains (an intrinsically good thing). And if we become the best weird little warrier there is, and it could happen, we will still be just a weird little warrier.
In other words, keep a sense of perspective.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
English-speaking only!
Putting a tournament to bed is the best part of the adventure. You spend weeks organizing registrations and food and housing and whatnot, hoping it all comes together and the bottom doesn't fall out of everything. Our biggest kick this year was the lack of the dome. The poor assistant principal had a heart attack at the sight of 150 policy teams cum tubs and suitcases, plus 113 LDers sans tubs but with the rest of their baggage, plus assorted coaches, judges and sex criminals milling about the place. There just wasn't room for them in the building. So we got started early, sent everyone off in the right direction, and while it was a little discombobulating to me, no one else seemed to suffer. After that, it was duck soup. Which is nice. And so, back in the box until next year (assistant principals willing, that is).
But of course, there's a beef. It's not a new one. I am a strong supporter of so-called lay judges. At the point where LDers can't convince the average intelligent person of a position, LD loses any real point. Or at least much of its point. It becomes so parochial that only a handful really care, supporters and administrators think of it as gobbledy-gook, and we threaten ourselves with isolation. From an academic viewpoint, that's a big risk (and one, I think, that policy has long ago taken, not to its benefit). When the only people capable of understanding positions are those who judge weekly, positions become impossible to understand by anyone else. But keeping lay judges in the mix forces debaters to pick up ballots from folks who don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no fem Ks. That's a good thing. HOWEVER, a lay judge is not a total idiot straight from the cabbage patch without the slightest clue of what is expected from them. Three teams brought these cabbage patchers to my tournament and told me they were judges. One of them didn't even speak English.
Jeez.
Is it so much to ask that teams train their judges? I mean, the judges in question are usually a parent. Are they so hideous a reflection of humanity that their kids can't explain the activity to them for half an hour? What really burns me is that the teams that bring great judges are the ones who get judged by the cabbage patchers, while the teams who bring cabbage patchers get judged by the great judges. Nice trade-off. Fortunately we sorted them out in the tab room and dropped them from the pool, but that is no benefit to the tournament, merely less of a harm to the debaters.
Next year's Bump will ask for judge qualifications. It will insist that judges speak English. And I will post HH's judging instructions to the website. I do not believe that this will help (I won't detail the 3 schools who, rather than try to pull a fast one with bad judges, simply told me that they had judges that literally didn't exist, which is a much faster one, until the point I hunted them down and collected extra judge fees from them), but at least it will help me sort things out a little better.
I know who you people are. You are not going to do it again. At least not to me (or anyone else in whose tab room I may be lurking).
But of course, there's a beef. It's not a new one. I am a strong supporter of so-called lay judges. At the point where LDers can't convince the average intelligent person of a position, LD loses any real point. Or at least much of its point. It becomes so parochial that only a handful really care, supporters and administrators think of it as gobbledy-gook, and we threaten ourselves with isolation. From an academic viewpoint, that's a big risk (and one, I think, that policy has long ago taken, not to its benefit). When the only people capable of understanding positions are those who judge weekly, positions become impossible to understand by anyone else. But keeping lay judges in the mix forces debaters to pick up ballots from folks who don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no fem Ks. That's a good thing. HOWEVER, a lay judge is not a total idiot straight from the cabbage patch without the slightest clue of what is expected from them. Three teams brought these cabbage patchers to my tournament and told me they were judges. One of them didn't even speak English.
Jeez.
Is it so much to ask that teams train their judges? I mean, the judges in question are usually a parent. Are they so hideous a reflection of humanity that their kids can't explain the activity to them for half an hour? What really burns me is that the teams that bring great judges are the ones who get judged by the cabbage patchers, while the teams who bring cabbage patchers get judged by the great judges. Nice trade-off. Fortunately we sorted them out in the tab room and dropped them from the pool, but that is no benefit to the tournament, merely less of a harm to the debaters.
Next year's Bump will ask for judge qualifications. It will insist that judges speak English. And I will post HH's judging instructions to the website. I do not believe that this will help (I won't detail the 3 schools who, rather than try to pull a fast one with bad judges, simply told me that they had judges that literally didn't exist, which is a much faster one, until the point I hunted them down and collected extra judge fees from them), but at least it will help me sort things out a little better.
I know who you people are. You are not going to do it again. At least not to me (or anyone else in whose tab room I may be lurking).
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Menick
There is that mania that comes over one as the major tournament draws near. Everybody wants more slots than everybody else, there's a waiting list of people who can't be bothered to follow the invitation, there's people who remind you that you promised them slots that you do sort of vaguely remember and so you add them to the list hoping that the shortage of flu vaccine this year might save your bacon at the eleventh hour, there's the usual suspects whom you haven't heard from and you've poked and prodded and nothing's happened and as a result you've made yet another enemy... No wonder one becomes something of a monster. And one does see the source of some of the so-called politics of the activity. It is, people need to remember, only a debate tournament. One of many. Yes, it does offer a large can of soup to the top LD speaker, but that's hardly a reason to make enemies-for-life over it. (If you signed up early, you'd be set, hint hint. But why would anyone do that? Do all debate teams run on fumes?) There are just so many rooms in the buildings, and so many families that will house, and so many slices of the dreaded vegan wedges. And to be honest, going over 120 in LD doesn't make a lot of sense if we break to doubles, because 5 rounds is a decent enough sorter for that number, but any higher and you'd really need 6 prelims, and God knows THAT isn't going to happen.
Good grief.
On the bright side, I've heard from the Nostrumite, who's doing his best to juggle his schedule to come back and judge for us again this year. Unfortunately he's in a state of permanent depression over the health of poor Pecksniff, the Nostrumian Applehead (and, as most people know, a littermate of Pip the Wondercat). Apparently the old Peckeroo has developed a case of feline diabetes, "which is just like human diabetes," the Mite reports, "only it's transient and you can't prick a cat's fingers to do a blood test." To cope with the situation, the Mite is giving Pecky a couple of shots of insulin a day, "which isn't as hard as you'd imagine," he says, plus giving him salve for his rheumy eyes ("which is like playing pin the tail on the eyeball") and forcing a snort of cherry-flavored antibiotics down his gullet once a day ("the fallout spray is like being anointed with holy water at an overeager Easter service"). But the hardest part, the Mite reports, is performing the regular urine test. "You have to understand that a cat just isn't going to pee in a jar," the lad says. "So what you have to do is follow him around all day, but secretly"—I have this vision of the Mite undercover in his trench coat and porkpie hat, dodging around the corners of his Cambridge apartment— "until you see him heading for the litter box, and then you sneak in underneath him with this cardboard strip that turns all shades of mud when he pees on it, and you've got to time it to the correct shade at the exact right moment, and then decide whether to increase or decrease his insulin dosage." Without Jules around to help out, this is driving Doctor Nostrumite a little batty. "At least the Nostrumutt is okay," he tells me. "You walk him a few times a day, he poops it, you scoops it, everyone's happy."
Presumably you can get further details from the lad himself next week when he once again descends on Bump.
Good grief.
On the bright side, I've heard from the Nostrumite, who's doing his best to juggle his schedule to come back and judge for us again this year. Unfortunately he's in a state of permanent depression over the health of poor Pecksniff, the Nostrumian Applehead (and, as most people know, a littermate of Pip the Wondercat). Apparently the old Peckeroo has developed a case of feline diabetes, "which is just like human diabetes," the Mite reports, "only it's transient and you can't prick a cat's fingers to do a blood test." To cope with the situation, the Mite is giving Pecky a couple of shots of insulin a day, "which isn't as hard as you'd imagine," he says, plus giving him salve for his rheumy eyes ("which is like playing pin the tail on the eyeball") and forcing a snort of cherry-flavored antibiotics down his gullet once a day ("the fallout spray is like being anointed with holy water at an overeager Easter service"). But the hardest part, the Mite reports, is performing the regular urine test. "You have to understand that a cat just isn't going to pee in a jar," the lad says. "So what you have to do is follow him around all day, but secretly"—I have this vision of the Mite undercover in his trench coat and porkpie hat, dodging around the corners of his Cambridge apartment— "until you see him heading for the litter box, and then you sneak in underneath him with this cardboard strip that turns all shades of mud when he pees on it, and you've got to time it to the correct shade at the exact right moment, and then decide whether to increase or decrease his insulin dosage." Without Jules around to help out, this is driving Doctor Nostrumite a little batty. "At least the Nostrumutt is okay," he tells me. "You walk him a few times a day, he poops it, you scoops it, everyone's happy."
Presumably you can get further details from the lad himself next week when he once again descends on Bump.
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Pre-Bump
Pre-Bump is pre-er than usual this year. We've already filled up policy, and LD is tracking over 100, and it's another week till the so-called deadline. Most of pre-Bump is spent worrying: is there enough housing/food/ballots/trophies/runners/handcuffs? It ought to be more relaxed every year because we've proven that we can do all of these things pretty effortlessly, but I challenge anyone to toss a shindig for over 400 people and not get a little wrapped up in it.
No one needs to identify the present wav file, since it identifies itself. I couldn't resist it.
So, if anyone cares (and I know YOU do, if no one else does), here's the thing about Nov-Dec. As it turns out, Aff has a fairly easy time proving that a gov has a moral obligation to folks outside its boundaries. What aff hardly ever does is show that it's an obligation to promo DI. The ob (which has nothing to do with democracy but with humanity) is simply to value other people, nothing more, and certainly nothing more specific. Sure, if there's a natural disaster, national boundaries are meaningless. The best example of that was the Iranian earthquakes, which killed something like 30,000 people. We were there in a blink, and the Iranis accepted our help with open arms. This was as it should be. A couple of weeks later, they were the axis of evil again. My point is, negs should look for a pretty solid explanation of what, exactly, the MO is and why it applies to DI. That's the core of the aff burden, and that's the hard part. On the other hand, negs have to be a little careful about sounding as if they're anti-democracy. The thing is, and from the start I've thought that this is the good neg position, the US promotion of DI comes with all the baggage of its being from the US. Is US democracy extricable from US capitalism? It's a question of cultural imperialism, which may be a hard concept either to understand or to sell. To wit: "culture" is a term that sums up all the values of a group. It is the combination of their religion and their politics and their food and their housing and their literature and their schools and their clothes—the full banana. It is the well from which individuals in the group draw the cores of their selves, i.e., their personalities, their identities. Individuals do not exist aside from their cultures; individuals are a part of slash a result of their cultures. If we value individuals, we must explicitly value this wellspring of their individuality as much as they do implicitly. What we have to do is look at what happens when two cultures "clash." We obviously see culture clash in today's world on a daily basis in all cultures: no one is immune from, say, the internet. Each culture does whatever it does to maintain itself in a positive way from what it might see as the negatives resulting from the clash. That's always been the way, since time began. Sometimes cultures take from other cultures, sometimes they don't. The Pennsylvania Amish don't drive Harleys; students at Penn State don't drive in horse-drawn carriages. The problem with the US culture vs other cultures is somewhat analogous to the situation of the US military vs other militaries: it's not a fair fight. Just as we can outshoot pretty much everybody with our guns, we can outculture them with our brand of capitalism. US culture works in other countries the way heroin works in the bloodstream, replacing the natural with the artificial. It can be seen as just as heinous. Why do you think it was such a big deal when Pepsi (not Coke) was the first to be sold in the Soviet Union? Or why is the Coke bottle among the universal icons on the planet? Does Mickey Mouse a mere cartoon, or is it a symbol of the cultural poison seeping through the veins of every potential consumer in every country on earth? God, even the French were worried about the effect of Euro-Disney (now called, by the way, Disneyland Paris). The phrase was, "a cultural Chernobyl." The US specifically promotes its democracy through its pervasive capitalism, and by so doing overwhelms the existing cultures. And the next thing you know, they're wearing Nike t-shirts in Afghanistan and the women are not wearing veils and the children don't listen to their parents anymore to honor the old ways... This is an extreme way of putting it, of course, but it does sort of sum it up.
No one needs to identify the present wav file, since it identifies itself. I couldn't resist it.
So, if anyone cares (and I know YOU do, if no one else does), here's the thing about Nov-Dec. As it turns out, Aff has a fairly easy time proving that a gov has a moral obligation to folks outside its boundaries. What aff hardly ever does is show that it's an obligation to promo DI. The ob (which has nothing to do with democracy but with humanity) is simply to value other people, nothing more, and certainly nothing more specific. Sure, if there's a natural disaster, national boundaries are meaningless. The best example of that was the Iranian earthquakes, which killed something like 30,000 people. We were there in a blink, and the Iranis accepted our help with open arms. This was as it should be. A couple of weeks later, they were the axis of evil again. My point is, negs should look for a pretty solid explanation of what, exactly, the MO is and why it applies to DI. That's the core of the aff burden, and that's the hard part. On the other hand, negs have to be a little careful about sounding as if they're anti-democracy. The thing is, and from the start I've thought that this is the good neg position, the US promotion of DI comes with all the baggage of its being from the US. Is US democracy extricable from US capitalism? It's a question of cultural imperialism, which may be a hard concept either to understand or to sell. To wit: "culture" is a term that sums up all the values of a group. It is the combination of their religion and their politics and their food and their housing and their literature and their schools and their clothes—the full banana. It is the well from which individuals in the group draw the cores of their selves, i.e., their personalities, their identities. Individuals do not exist aside from their cultures; individuals are a part of slash a result of their cultures. If we value individuals, we must explicitly value this wellspring of their individuality as much as they do implicitly. What we have to do is look at what happens when two cultures "clash." We obviously see culture clash in today's world on a daily basis in all cultures: no one is immune from, say, the internet. Each culture does whatever it does to maintain itself in a positive way from what it might see as the negatives resulting from the clash. That's always been the way, since time began. Sometimes cultures take from other cultures, sometimes they don't. The Pennsylvania Amish don't drive Harleys; students at Penn State don't drive in horse-drawn carriages. The problem with the US culture vs other cultures is somewhat analogous to the situation of the US military vs other militaries: it's not a fair fight. Just as we can outshoot pretty much everybody with our guns, we can outculture them with our brand of capitalism. US culture works in other countries the way heroin works in the bloodstream, replacing the natural with the artificial. It can be seen as just as heinous. Why do you think it was such a big deal when Pepsi (not Coke) was the first to be sold in the Soviet Union? Or why is the Coke bottle among the universal icons on the planet? Does Mickey Mouse a mere cartoon, or is it a symbol of the cultural poison seeping through the veins of every potential consumer in every country on earth? God, even the French were worried about the effect of Euro-Disney (now called, by the way, Disneyland Paris). The phrase was, "a cultural Chernobyl." The US specifically promotes its democracy through its pervasive capitalism, and by so doing overwhelms the existing cultures. And the next thing you know, they're wearing Nike t-shirts in Afghanistan and the women are not wearing veils and the children don't listen to their parents anymore to honor the old ways... This is an extreme way of putting it, of course, but it does sort of sum it up.
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Our story so far
For all practical purposes the debate season is now in full swing, so let's see where we are.
We've migrated many of the meetings to the chez, and I'm starting to push for more meetings at other chezes. It's a lot easier, as I've been saying, to talk among a handful of people than the entire 13th tribe of Israel, and more gets accomplished. On the down side, half the team (the rawer recruits) haven't figured things like, if they sign up for a meeting they should look on the signup sheet to find out when the meeting is, or that since all of the team business is conducted through emails, that it might be a good idea for them to read their emails once in a while. I still sense that brain-fog attrition is not yet concluded for this season, and that we still stand to lose one or two more. Considering that there is a tournament virtually every week, and no one seems to know this other than me, we're not in the greatest of shapes. Where are the hungry people? Well, I oversimplify, because there is at least one hungry novice (she knows who she is), and maybe more. On the plus side, I'm seeing more JV hunger. Not that I'm all that in favor of hunger per se, but total lack of same sort of baffles me. Back in the day, there was so much hunger it used to scare the pants off me. What I'd like to see is balanced hunger.
Bump is filling up frighteningly fast. At least other teams are hungry! I've sold out all my hired judging, and filled up most of the policy slots two weeks before the deadline. I do hope that we really DO get more rooms in the future. Although I like to blame everything on my hardware engineers (because I like the looks on their faces when I do), it's not their fault we don't have a basement. Maybe next year. Bump assignments will be made at next week's tutti meeting, when all the forensic fruttis are tossed in together. I have a feeling a lot of people won't be happy, but I can't just give jobs to people because they used to be a part of the team...
Judging all weekend at NFA was rather enjoyable, as it turns out. I'd forgotten that I like judging, although I do also like sleeping and eating, neither of which comes easily at Newburgh. Still, it's fun to get into the trenches for a while and see who's who and what's what, and it's also illuminating to hear a topic argued, especially early in its life. I think I did get some good stuff to pass along to people, although no one bothered to comment one way or the other when I did. Come to think of it, maybe they didn't give a raccoon's patella. You know, I didn't have to be there, you ungrateful louts! I could have been golfing! (Except for the snow and ice.)
We've migrated many of the meetings to the chez, and I'm starting to push for more meetings at other chezes. It's a lot easier, as I've been saying, to talk among a handful of people than the entire 13th tribe of Israel, and more gets accomplished. On the down side, half the team (the rawer recruits) haven't figured things like, if they sign up for a meeting they should look on the signup sheet to find out when the meeting is, or that since all of the team business is conducted through emails, that it might be a good idea for them to read their emails once in a while. I still sense that brain-fog attrition is not yet concluded for this season, and that we still stand to lose one or two more. Considering that there is a tournament virtually every week, and no one seems to know this other than me, we're not in the greatest of shapes. Where are the hungry people? Well, I oversimplify, because there is at least one hungry novice (she knows who she is), and maybe more. On the plus side, I'm seeing more JV hunger. Not that I'm all that in favor of hunger per se, but total lack of same sort of baffles me. Back in the day, there was so much hunger it used to scare the pants off me. What I'd like to see is balanced hunger.
Bump is filling up frighteningly fast. At least other teams are hungry! I've sold out all my hired judging, and filled up most of the policy slots two weeks before the deadline. I do hope that we really DO get more rooms in the future. Although I like to blame everything on my hardware engineers (because I like the looks on their faces when I do), it's not their fault we don't have a basement. Maybe next year. Bump assignments will be made at next week's tutti meeting, when all the forensic fruttis are tossed in together. I have a feeling a lot of people won't be happy, but I can't just give jobs to people because they used to be a part of the team...
Judging all weekend at NFA was rather enjoyable, as it turns out. I'd forgotten that I like judging, although I do also like sleeping and eating, neither of which comes easily at Newburgh. Still, it's fun to get into the trenches for a while and see who's who and what's what, and it's also illuminating to hear a topic argued, especially early in its life. I think I did get some good stuff to pass along to people, although no one bothered to comment one way or the other when I did. Come to think of it, maybe they didn't give a raccoon's patella. You know, I didn't have to be there, you ungrateful louts! I could have been golfing! (Except for the snow and ice.)
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Chaos theory
I've really grown to hate big meetings at the school. Nothing is communicated effectively, except maybe about 10% of the intended information. There's no real dialogue, no real imparting of anything in any direction. I can't figure out why half the people come in the first place, and those rare moments when everyone is engaged, they're all engaged in different directions. It's like a bad rehearsal for a half-written play with all understudies and no director. So, I will retreat further into specialized meetings. The chezes on the topic have been fine, as have been the odd special novice session. Plus now we're starting the demo rounds, and that fills up the empty hours. I think what I need to do next is strategy and tactics for grownups, which I marginally touched last night, but poorly. In other words, a session or two for varsity only. In any case, I see this as an incurable problem, the big meeting miasma, that is. Or I see it only as curable through regular injections of short meetings. I will stick with biggies for initial topic brainstorming, though, which would be the first couple of weeks of December. Then back to splinter groups. So it goes.
Or is it possible that I am getting tired of doing this? I don't think so. I'm just tired of doing it poorly.
Contrary to expectations, instead of having more policy rooms at Bump, we'll have fewer.Thank God the school has completed its enlargement program! Actually, I think it's the basement construction that is holding us back. Ewok is on the case trying to get more space, but I doubt if he'll be successful. You can't get classrooms from a turnip.
Or is it possible that I am getting tired of doing this? I don't think so. I'm just tired of doing it poorly.
Contrary to expectations, instead of having more policy rooms at Bump, we'll have fewer.Thank God the school has completed its enlargement program! Actually, I think it's the basement construction that is holding us back. Ewok is on the case trying to get more space, but I doubt if he'll be successful. You can't get classrooms from a turnip.
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
None of the Above
I enjoyed this week of chezes discussing the topic with a small number of people. It reminded me of the good old days, when the entire team fit into the backseat of a VW Beetle, and meetings were exclusively topic discussions at the chez, or close to exclusively topic discussions. We would talk about other stuff too, but mostly it was like fine dinner conversation without the fine dinner. I don't love these because I get to stay home, but because everybody gets a chance to talk fairly equally. There's a big difference between Menick at a blackboard and Menick in a comfy chair, at least in the playing out of chitchat. I'm going to institute a weekly topic analysis session, at the chez, on Wednesdays, from 7-8. With a signup, limited to 7 people (more than that would get out of hand). People can come or not, and the session would occur provided that there's enough interest (i.e. 2 or more people on a given week). We'll see how it works out.
I also like the fact that we've now isolated the three sides of any debate round: affirmative, negative, and none-of-the-above. The fashion of NOTA drives the average coach crazy, for a variety of reasons, chief among them being that LD is intended for reasoned discourse on the theoretical problems of the day, and NOTA encourages mere academic flummery. The new topic, for instance, asks to evaluate whether the US is right to push its democratic ideals in foreign nations. This is an interesting question that raises many issues of history and politics and cultural identity and hegemony and whatnot. NOTA looks at the topic and says, for instance, that governments are intrinsically amoral and therefore immune from questions of right and wrong. This would be run, presumably, as a negative, but it isn't. It supports both sides (or undermines both sides). A NOTA., by definition. Of course, at least that particular argument is orthodox NOTA. The latest NOTAs take recent postmodern scholarship (which is something of an oxymoron) and apply that to the topic: On one level or another, relativism precludes the resolution; pick your pomo guru to support it. Preferably a Frenchman.
The French have a lot to answer for.
The thing is, that's the stuff colleges teach nowadays, and a number of LD folks are in college or recent graduates immersed in this stuff. Literary and linguistic scholarship is often conducted only at the level of structuralism and relativism and deconstructionism. Study of the narrative has been replaced by the study of narration. Now I'm as into heuristics as the next guy, but sometimes the text is the context, and the subtext as the signifier of the inherent non-relativistic ur-texts worthy of disputation is a lot of ... malarkey. Or as the French say, "la malarque." Indeed, Derrida, before he "died," was working on a book with that very title, "La Malarque," in which he admitted that he was in fact an illiterate wrangler of truffle pigs who just happened to strike it big on the pomo market when some hapless graduate student mistranslated his as-told-to book "Les Champignons de Provence" as "No God, No Radio."
The problem that results from this scholarship is simple. A small coterie of pomos push their ideas down on high school students. At the very least they divert these students from the real text of the resolutions, and at the worst, they force these students to study texts that are simply beyond their educational training. Debaters are probably the smartest 16-year-olds in the universe, but should we be teaching them the latest fashion in philiosophy before they master the norms? Did Picasso paint abstracts before he learned to draw figures and mix paint? High School LD is about the only active venue for high schoolers to study any philosophy at all. And maybe, ever again. Being canonical may be dull, from the post-graduate point of view, but isn't it best for the students? It is probably not a winning approach, compared to running some hifalutin case that only a mother (or a pomother) could love—or understand—but it would much better serve the purpose of the activity.
I also like the fact that we've now isolated the three sides of any debate round: affirmative, negative, and none-of-the-above. The fashion of NOTA drives the average coach crazy, for a variety of reasons, chief among them being that LD is intended for reasoned discourse on the theoretical problems of the day, and NOTA encourages mere academic flummery. The new topic, for instance, asks to evaluate whether the US is right to push its democratic ideals in foreign nations. This is an interesting question that raises many issues of history and politics and cultural identity and hegemony and whatnot. NOTA looks at the topic and says, for instance, that governments are intrinsically amoral and therefore immune from questions of right and wrong. This would be run, presumably, as a negative, but it isn't. It supports both sides (or undermines both sides). A NOTA., by definition. Of course, at least that particular argument is orthodox NOTA. The latest NOTAs take recent postmodern scholarship (which is something of an oxymoron) and apply that to the topic: On one level or another, relativism precludes the resolution; pick your pomo guru to support it. Preferably a Frenchman.
The French have a lot to answer for.
The thing is, that's the stuff colleges teach nowadays, and a number of LD folks are in college or recent graduates immersed in this stuff. Literary and linguistic scholarship is often conducted only at the level of structuralism and relativism and deconstructionism. Study of the narrative has been replaced by the study of narration. Now I'm as into heuristics as the next guy, but sometimes the text is the context, and the subtext as the signifier of the inherent non-relativistic ur-texts worthy of disputation is a lot of ... malarkey. Or as the French say, "la malarque." Indeed, Derrida, before he "died," was working on a book with that very title, "La Malarque," in which he admitted that he was in fact an illiterate wrangler of truffle pigs who just happened to strike it big on the pomo market when some hapless graduate student mistranslated his as-told-to book "Les Champignons de Provence" as "No God, No Radio."
The problem that results from this scholarship is simple. A small coterie of pomos push their ideas down on high school students. At the very least they divert these students from the real text of the resolutions, and at the worst, they force these students to study texts that are simply beyond their educational training. Debaters are probably the smartest 16-year-olds in the universe, but should we be teaching them the latest fashion in philiosophy before they master the norms? Did Picasso paint abstracts before he learned to draw figures and mix paint? High School LD is about the only active venue for high schoolers to study any philosophy at all. And maybe, ever again. Being canonical may be dull, from the post-graduate point of view, but isn't it best for the students? It is probably not a winning approach, compared to running some hifalutin case that only a mother (or a pomother) could love—or understand—but it would much better serve the purpose of the activity.
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
An instant classic
Headline from the Onion: Jacques Derrida 'Dies'
In other news, the Caveman to Frenchman lecture continues apace. The nice thing about pomo is that it is all so contradictory and senseless that you can say virtually anything and have a decent crack at being accurate. Whatever accuracy is. Speaking of which, I was just looking at something talking about Realists and Neo-Realists. I don't know about you, but I am happy that reality has been replaced by neo-reality. Reality was getting so ... old.
Last night Noah returned from the grave of post-neo-reality and worked with the upperclassmen on the new topic. He's actually taken a course, apparently, in Democratic Peace Theory, or at least a course with a Democratic Peace theorist, so he had a strong take on it that I liked. His blackboard scribblings had all sorts of things like Values and Criteria noted. My blackboard had all sorts of algebraic equations demonstrating imaginary numbers left over from the school day, all of which I was afraid to erase. I would have no trouble erasing real numbers, or even neo-real numbers, but I'm not messing with any of those imaginary numbers. No sir. My mama raised me better than that.
The novices read aloud last night—at least those who remembered the assignment, God love 'em—an interesting mix including Tolstoyesvky (literally, thanks to Robbie), Al Franken and Neil Gaiman. No stone of literature was left unturned. All the readers did a pretty good job. The point is to learn to read cases with some emotion, rather than just vomit out a string of words that's hard to follow. We also talked about how to argue, but they all argued against what I was saying. Not to mention my work with them on the new topic, where it seemed as if the materials I've been forwarding simply never existed. Imaginary research, I guess.
Thank God, when all is said and done, there is no reality. Because if there were, I'd have to be agnostic about it.
In other news, the Caveman to Frenchman lecture continues apace. The nice thing about pomo is that it is all so contradictory and senseless that you can say virtually anything and have a decent crack at being accurate. Whatever accuracy is. Speaking of which, I was just looking at something talking about Realists and Neo-Realists. I don't know about you, but I am happy that reality has been replaced by neo-reality. Reality was getting so ... old.
Last night Noah returned from the grave of post-neo-reality and worked with the upperclassmen on the new topic. He's actually taken a course, apparently, in Democratic Peace Theory, or at least a course with a Democratic Peace theorist, so he had a strong take on it that I liked. His blackboard scribblings had all sorts of things like Values and Criteria noted. My blackboard had all sorts of algebraic equations demonstrating imaginary numbers left over from the school day, all of which I was afraid to erase. I would have no trouble erasing real numbers, or even neo-real numbers, but I'm not messing with any of those imaginary numbers. No sir. My mama raised me better than that.
The novices read aloud last night—at least those who remembered the assignment, God love 'em—an interesting mix including Tolstoyesvky (literally, thanks to Robbie), Al Franken and Neil Gaiman. No stone of literature was left unturned. All the readers did a pretty good job. The point is to learn to read cases with some emotion, rather than just vomit out a string of words that's hard to follow. We also talked about how to argue, but they all argued against what I was saying. Not to mention my work with them on the new topic, where it seemed as if the materials I've been forwarding simply never existed. Imaginary research, I guess.
Thank God, when all is said and done, there is no reality. Because if there were, I'd have to be agnostic about it.
Monday, October 18, 2004
The greatest joys
One is torn when it comes to deciding which is the greatest joy: seeing the expression on debaters' faces when they win their first trophy, or seeing the expression on parents' faces when you hand them their first ballot and tell them they have to go judge. It's a close call. Grown men and women, who have no compunctions about telling their teenaged children how to live every aspect of their lives from dawn till dusk till dawn again, somehow feel inadequate to evaluate teenagers' opinions on society. I still recall my earliest judging experiences. Now, granted, I may be an aberration, but I got a kick out of it right from the beginning. Sure, timing was tough until you got the hang of it, and flowing wants experience, but listening to what was said and evaluating who had the better argument was absolutely no big deal, especially at the novice level, where we dump most parents in their early going.
Another great joy is listening to your new surround-sound setup. To inaugurate it last night I watched ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO. Not for any particular reason, other than being a big JD fan. Anyhow, most of the movie consists of JD whispering to AB, or JD or AB whispering to someone else, punctuated by serious gunplay. The whispering was not enhanced by surroundage, since that all came from the front, but when the bullets were flying, there was enough bazzooom in the room to knock me off my chair and then some. Tonight I'll spend some time figuring out how to lower the volume of the subwoofer.
I'm giving up on the present wave file. If these people can't identify a line from The Matrix, they're beyond me. I thought that one was a gimme. Live and learn.
Anyhow, the Bronx was small but profitable. Junior R earned a 3rd-place speaker award, quite an accomplishment. And in the MHL, Nicole came in 3rd, which is an excellent way to begin one's career. The other novices all seemed to enjoy themselves, which frankly is the real reason we have this beginners' event, to get the old feet wet and to feel out the activity in the trenches. MHLs are always a tough animal. You have to be good to win trophies, but not winning trophies is not a measure of not being good. There are so many factors involved, chief among them being the judging. In a three-round tournament, if you lose one round, you're out of it. Which means any one judge can pull the rug out from under you. Given that most of the judges are varsity debaters, a group I rank quite low in the overall hierarchy, well, you get the picture.
Another great joy is listening to your new surround-sound setup. To inaugurate it last night I watched ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO. Not for any particular reason, other than being a big JD fan. Anyhow, most of the movie consists of JD whispering to AB, or JD or AB whispering to someone else, punctuated by serious gunplay. The whispering was not enhanced by surroundage, since that all came from the front, but when the bullets were flying, there was enough bazzooom in the room to knock me off my chair and then some. Tonight I'll spend some time figuring out how to lower the volume of the subwoofer.
I'm giving up on the present wave file. If these people can't identify a line from The Matrix, they're beyond me. I thought that one was a gimme. Live and learn.
Anyhow, the Bronx was small but profitable. Junior R earned a 3rd-place speaker award, quite an accomplishment. And in the MHL, Nicole came in 3rd, which is an excellent way to begin one's career. The other novices all seemed to enjoy themselves, which frankly is the real reason we have this beginners' event, to get the old feet wet and to feel out the activity in the trenches. MHLs are always a tough animal. You have to be good to win trophies, but not winning trophies is not a measure of not being good. There are so many factors involved, chief among them being the judging. In a three-round tournament, if you lose one round, you're out of it. Which means any one judge can pull the rug out from under you. Given that most of the judges are varsity debaters, a group I rank quite low in the overall hierarchy, well, you get the picture.
Monday, October 11, 2004
My season begins
I had all intentions of judging at Monticello, but because Bill Barthelme was sick, I ended up filling in for him. Lots of tabroom issues, not the least of which was the software refusing to print schematics. I had to paste into Word, which does the job well enough, but looks a little too much like happy hands in the home for my blood. And the host team was a little lax in checking to see if rounds were getting off, and once or twice eliminations folks just sat around waiting for no-show judges for half an hour, or sat on their ballots for half an hour, easily fixed running/table situations that caused the whole shebang to go about an hour later than it should. This is where the runner wrangler comes in!
By comparison, Bump is run with the precision of a POW camp. I think of it as maybe just a notch down from Abu Ghraib. In a good sense.
This was Rose J-T's last tournament as director, and she wrote a nice farewell piece in the packet. It looks like Bergenfield won't be able to travel out of district, at least on school buses, so they're out of commission. Lexingon has a new policy coach. Averill's retiring this year. Etc., etc., etc. The face of the business is changing dramatically.
But we had good results. First timer GS went 2-3 with outstanding speaker points, so it was no mistake to put him in JV. Little Roth and Bent broke, as did E-Rin, but they were all caught in the upset sweep of the first elims, where all the top seeds went ... to seed, I guess. Still, trophies beat no trophies. Ewok was just a couple of speaks away from breaking himself, so it was, overall, a good weekend. We topped it off at the Beach Chinese, where I was shocked and appalled to see not just Ewok but McCricht stir their noodles with their hands. Good grief. In the olden days (ah, the olden days), this incident would occupy at least three subsequent meetings, and prominent mention in my memoirs. Oh well, at least no one pasted a spoon to their nose, although this may just have been a factor of there being no spoons available.
Meanwhile, does O'Cruz include Flashman in the quest? I realize it doesn't fit, really, but... On the other hand, can one ever top the word Dotheboys? I can't imagine the reading list. [For the rest of you, don't ask.]
By comparison, Bump is run with the precision of a POW camp. I think of it as maybe just a notch down from Abu Ghraib. In a good sense.
This was Rose J-T's last tournament as director, and she wrote a nice farewell piece in the packet. It looks like Bergenfield won't be able to travel out of district, at least on school buses, so they're out of commission. Lexingon has a new policy coach. Averill's retiring this year. Etc., etc., etc. The face of the business is changing dramatically.
But we had good results. First timer GS went 2-3 with outstanding speaker points, so it was no mistake to put him in JV. Little Roth and Bent broke, as did E-Rin, but they were all caught in the upset sweep of the first elims, where all the top seeds went ... to seed, I guess. Still, trophies beat no trophies. Ewok was just a couple of speaks away from breaking himself, so it was, overall, a good weekend. We topped it off at the Beach Chinese, where I was shocked and appalled to see not just Ewok but McCricht stir their noodles with their hands. Good grief. In the olden days (ah, the olden days), this incident would occupy at least three subsequent meetings, and prominent mention in my memoirs. Oh well, at least no one pasted a spoon to their nose, although this may just have been a factor of there being no spoons available.
Meanwhile, does O'Cruz include Flashman in the quest? I realize it doesn't fit, really, but... On the other hand, can one ever top the word Dotheboys? I can't imagine the reading list. [For the rest of you, don't ask.]
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Eddie Haskell disappears into the sunset
I am saddened that no one was able to identify the clip from "Leave it to Beaver." Obviously it's a generational thing, but I figured that most people were just asking their parents about these sounds. I don't seem to be able to pick right: either I'm giving away too many or too few crappy prizes. You can't win.
The more I look at the democratic ideals topic, the more I imagine a shootout at the outre corral. You can run practically anything on this, all sorts of diatribes on imperialism and capitalism and feminism, and those are just off the top of my head. Judges at national circuit events will be running for the hills, pretending to know all nature of obscure and not-so-obscure critical positions. The thing is, democratic ideals means whatever you want it to mean. There's going to be a lot of history tossed around, among other things. Any wonder why I tell folks to read the paper.
Speaking of which, I've decided to send a daily bulletin of what they missed that day, at least for a little while. I mean, people will either read the paper or they won't. I do have to admit that this morning's edition was a dog, except for the Dylan article. I was never an acolyte, like some, but I had the odd album. I used to know people who really did idolize old Zimmerman, who'd memorized all the lyrics, who compared him to Whitman, etc., etc. If anything, I was the odd man out because I had no passion whatsoever, on either side. When it came to Dylan, you had to be passionate. Which makes his revelations (or what I'll read of them in the Times) so interesting. He wanted to run a wooden leg factory? Something tells me he's creating his apocrypha more than his memoirs. He is Dylan, after all. In any case, I spent so much time reading that article I didn't have time for the local papers. I hate missing the comics in the morning. The day just doesn't go right after that.
The more I look at the democratic ideals topic, the more I imagine a shootout at the outre corral. You can run practically anything on this, all sorts of diatribes on imperialism and capitalism and feminism, and those are just off the top of my head. Judges at national circuit events will be running for the hills, pretending to know all nature of obscure and not-so-obscure critical positions. The thing is, democratic ideals means whatever you want it to mean. There's going to be a lot of history tossed around, among other things. Any wonder why I tell folks to read the paper.
Speaking of which, I've decided to send a daily bulletin of what they missed that day, at least for a little while. I mean, people will either read the paper or they won't. I do have to admit that this morning's edition was a dog, except for the Dylan article. I was never an acolyte, like some, but I had the odd album. I used to know people who really did idolize old Zimmerman, who'd memorized all the lyrics, who compared him to Whitman, etc., etc. If anything, I was the odd man out because I had no passion whatsoever, on either side. When it came to Dylan, you had to be passionate. Which makes his revelations (or what I'll read of them in the Times) so interesting. He wanted to run a wooden leg factory? Something tells me he's creating his apocrypha more than his memoirs. He is Dylan, after all. In any case, I spent so much time reading that article I didn't have time for the local papers. I hate missing the comics in the morning. The day just doesn't go right after that.
Friday, October 01, 2004
Meet the parents
I'm always amused when I get more novice parents than novices at parent night. Something tells me there will have been a few discussions of bait-cutting last night, and we've seen the last of the logy. Aye, we hardly knew ye.
So the new topic is a moral obligation to spread democracy? Talk about penumbras. Talk about definitions. Oy. It reminds me of some other topic, and I'll dig back in my files, but meanwhile, by saying it's the US, it implies that the US has some special responsibility a la the old superpower analysis. If you're going aff, try to get GWB as your judge...
Speaking of which, I just heard from the Nostrumite again. He's in a state of permanent depression over last night's debate. "I watched it on PBS," he said, "where they followed the rules and only showed the speaker, not the reaction shots." Apparently things were jumping over at CBS. "They were scratching themselves, flipping each other the bird, coughing the word bullshit into their cupped hands. And all I saw was George W doing the watch-my-grimace-turn-into-a-smirk bit." Which doesn't mean the lad intends to vote Democratic. "That Kerry looked awfully tall," he reported. "You've got to watch out for those tall guys." The Mite, of course, is about the size that P.T.Barnum liked to feature as headliner, which may factor into it a bit.
Anyhow, the season begins today as the swallows return to New Haven. Vayos con dios, amigos. Vayos con los debate dios.
Or something like that.
So the new topic is a moral obligation to spread democracy? Talk about penumbras. Talk about definitions. Oy. It reminds me of some other topic, and I'll dig back in my files, but meanwhile, by saying it's the US, it implies that the US has some special responsibility a la the old superpower analysis. If you're going aff, try to get GWB as your judge...
Speaking of which, I just heard from the Nostrumite again. He's in a state of permanent depression over last night's debate. "I watched it on PBS," he said, "where they followed the rules and only showed the speaker, not the reaction shots." Apparently things were jumping over at CBS. "They were scratching themselves, flipping each other the bird, coughing the word bullshit into their cupped hands. And all I saw was George W doing the watch-my-grimace-turn-into-a-smirk bit." Which doesn't mean the lad intends to vote Democratic. "That Kerry looked awfully tall," he reported. "You've got to watch out for those tall guys." The Mite, of course, is about the size that P.T.Barnum liked to feature as headliner, which may factor into it a bit.
Anyhow, the season begins today as the swallows return to New Haven. Vayos con dios, amigos. Vayos con los debate dios.
Or something like that.
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
How to be a debater
If I had to outline certain defining characteristics for being an LD debater, this is probably how I would prioritize my list (which has, as it turns out, exactly one item).
#1. Debate. Debate, that is, as a verb, imperative. I attribute it to the lack of good TV on Tuesday nights, but I have never had a team with so many people showing up for meetings, and never debating. For some reason, of course, they nonetheless consider themselves adequate to judge others. Last night, having a tutti meeting, aka a tutti fruitti, we had people hanging off the rafters. 4 years worth of them. Half of them haven't debated in this calendar year, and show little interest in changing the status quo. Two of them volunteered to judge at Regis.
So I guess my next rule is, no judging unless you're: 1. a senior whose survived three years of me; or 2. an active debater. You prove yourself to be an active debater by having debated since 9/1/04. Inactive debaters will not be solicited as judges.
Inactive debaters, in my estimation, fill a much needed gap. I certainly don't need them at the "lecture" meetings, where I talk endlessly and amaze myself with my garrulousness. I can't imagine why they would want to listen to the 88th lecture on the definition of rights, or the 195th browbeat on signups. And I don't need their input at chezes, because there's only room for real players at the chez, not fellow travelers. I guess there is a place for freebooters at the brainstorms. The brainstorms are, theoretically, beneficial to all of us as we explore the deep background of topics. It's educational. That's about the only place the debateless are welcome.
I'll start acting accordingly next week. Meanwhile, no one identified the Zardoz quote. I only put it there because I'm tired of everything being too easy. Henceforth, whenever I blog, I'll do a new wave, and vice versa.
#1. Debate. Debate, that is, as a verb, imperative. I attribute it to the lack of good TV on Tuesday nights, but I have never had a team with so many people showing up for meetings, and never debating. For some reason, of course, they nonetheless consider themselves adequate to judge others. Last night, having a tutti meeting, aka a tutti fruitti, we had people hanging off the rafters. 4 years worth of them. Half of them haven't debated in this calendar year, and show little interest in changing the status quo. Two of them volunteered to judge at Regis.
So I guess my next rule is, no judging unless you're: 1. a senior whose survived three years of me; or 2. an active debater. You prove yourself to be an active debater by having debated since 9/1/04. Inactive debaters will not be solicited as judges.
Inactive debaters, in my estimation, fill a much needed gap. I certainly don't need them at the "lecture" meetings, where I talk endlessly and amaze myself with my garrulousness. I can't imagine why they would want to listen to the 88th lecture on the definition of rights, or the 195th browbeat on signups. And I don't need their input at chezes, because there's only room for real players at the chez, not fellow travelers. I guess there is a place for freebooters at the brainstorms. The brainstorms are, theoretically, beneficial to all of us as we explore the deep background of topics. It's educational. That's about the only place the debateless are welcome.
I'll start acting accordingly next week. Meanwhile, no one identified the Zardoz quote. I only put it there because I'm tired of everything being too easy. Henceforth, whenever I blog, I'll do a new wave, and vice versa.
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