In which we spend a weekend in the country

Sheryl was down for the weekend, and this and that were done by one and all. Friday we went into the city to, first, see the Moholy-Nagy exhibit at the Gug, then to have dinner with a handful of the DisAds, including JV. For a while, before the civilians showed up, we discussed debate business. JV is going to try to herd local folks into some novice scrimmages after school. With the demise of the MHL, which was for all practical purposes created to provide novice rounds, those rounds are sadly lacking in the region. The odd thing is, the MHL’s demise was all its own; there was no outside catalyst. People just stopped coming, even though the same number of people needed the same number of rounds. Go figure. Anyhow, there needs to be something for the young forensicians. You don’t get good by lying fallow. Experience is required. As a general rule, the average 4th year debater can beat almost any younger debater drawing on experience alone. This is not a guarantee, but it’s hardly counterintuitive. If you want to get good at something, practice. And if you want your novice year to go by with you doing nothing but growing moss, don’t practice. But the rounds have to be there in the first place before you can go to them. Some local scrimmages could go a long way to replacing the MHL.

Kaz and I additionally provided some input to the Rather Large Bronx folks about registration. Getting people through efficiently is always a problem anywhere there’s a lot of people, and RLB is one of the worse. Needless to say, my Toolkit addresses this. If nothing else, I’m pretty efficient and have plenty of tips to make others efficient. Whether RLB takes our suggestions remain to be seen; I’m sure they’ll take some of them. No registration process is so perfect (and no tournament is so perfect, for that matter) that it cannot be improved. I’ll share more on this as it comes to pass.

We also soaked up some other culture, like the three-woman version of the Scottish play at Boscobel and a tour of the Gothic Revival mansion at Lyndhurst and a screening of North by Northwest to educate the Hitchcock-deprived Lexington coach. Very satisfying weekend overall. And there's only a couple more before the games begin in earnest.

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In which we evaluate a few things

I am now lined up for all the usual college suspects, with the exception of Yale, which I will no longer be working. Mostly they will be the same old same olds, with the exception of the Ben Franklin folk, who are going a week earlier. I’ve talked about this before. Everything about it is counterintuitive, and counter to the original plan when it moved to Presidents’ Weekend, but their reasons for trying the different weekend were strong. It is theirs to do. I have a feeling that it will all work out fine, but the event will prove itself, or not, when it arrives. The basic hunger for rounds, at least where there’s bids attached, seems unabated, which should do a lot to remove the question mark from the new date. As far as I’m concerned, it’s much of a muchness, but there is no question that not having a team, while it doesn’t necessarily render me opinion-free, does render me relatively opinion-worthless. For instance, Kirby had some questions about the divisions at Rather Large Bronx, and he asked for thoughts from both me and Kaz. She has a whole herd of horses in the race, and I don’t. So we definitely look at things differently. Then again, even when I did have horses, it was a mere handful, which is a lot different from a raging herd. I went for years without having to decide who would get which slots, and I was happy not to have to make that sort of decision. She has to make it all the time.

All things being equal, I’m expecting to call on McGonagall and the Paginator as the latest cogs in the great wheel of tabbing. Kaz will be where she can be, which is mostly where I’ll be. I would love to work a show with CP again, since we haven’t shared the honors since, I think, Bronx in ’14, AKA the “Luck Be a Lady Tonight” Karaoke Bonanza. I’ll call on Catholic Charlie when I can; he doth protest that he’s innocent of knowledge of debate tabbing, which he then proceeds to do in his sleep. (In reality, I’m the only person who usually falls asleep in the tab room. Give me five minutes of catnap and I’m ready for anything. So why can’t I sleep in the middle of the night in a bed?)

My standing offer to bring new people into the tab room is still out there. I’ve heard people complain that tab rooms are closed black boxes and I’ve invited those people in directly to watch and learn and help, and they’ve ignored me, I guess because it’s more satisfying to carp than to do what is mostly a thankless job of blindly juggling arithmetic and trying to find you-know-who who hasn’t checked in 15 minutes after smart time. Most of tabbing is enforcement. It has ever been thus, that enforcement was required, but once e-ballots started removing the truly mind-numbing business of entering ballots, the enforcement has started to show more clearly. Anyhow, we will always need new people to direct tournaments and to understand the tabbing process. Yes, tabroom does a lot, but there’s a limit to automatic. You need to know why you’re doing what you’re doing, plus you need to move vast numbers of children (the forensicians) and lunatics (half of the judges) and serial killers (the other half of the judges) from one place to another in a timely manner such that everyone is happy and no one comes into tab threatening your life with a railway share. I've written my big old toolkit to help people out with this. But getting in there and doing it, preferably under the guidance of someone experienced, is the best way to learn the ropes.

Any takers?

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In which we blast MSTOC

I do not necessarily have mixed feelings about debate in schools before high school. There’s a great video with Jonathan A that expresses all the excitement of working with younger kids, and the benefits to them in their education. On the other hand, when I saw on my tabroom.com front page yesterday that the Middle School TOC registration was open, I just shook my head in despair.

I gather that one really doesn’t qualify for MSTOC; one just signs up for it. It is, like the TOC, in Kaintuck. Which means that parents who can afford it will be able to send (and probably accompany) their 11-year-olds to a national tournament. And we need this in the debate community because…why?

The VCA knows my opinion of the TOC, and I get the impression that half the people who attend it share that opinion. The organization originally existed to promote a certain level of competition that other national tournaments did not promote. You had to perform well in tough situations a number of times, thus demonstrating that you had the right stuff on a regular basis. A variety of parameters were set for determining the toughness of those situations. So far so good. The problem is, decades later, the TOC, which was created to set a standard of high quality competition, has been overwhelmed by all the negatives that fierce competition can lead to.

First of all, the debate world has sorted itself into circuit and non-circuit. On the one hand, students/schools will travel the country, virtually every weekend, at high cost, to attend the circuit tournament du jour. One big reason that TOC is dominated year after year by the same schools is that they can afford it. They can afford the travel expenses, and they can afford the coaching that often includes a little army of sub-coaches. I don’t begrudge rich programs spending their own money, but do we really think that this in any way, shape or form benefits debate as a whole? Most national tournaments strictly limit numbers, so a big program is still only sending 3 or 4 kids into a division halfway across the country. If there’s a hundred LDers on the team, and maybe we rotate all the hot slots from weekend to weekend so that our best dozen or so (and I’m being generous here) get to travel (because since the goal is the TOC, and you need a strong debate CV to qualify, so going to one big tournament a year won’t hack it), another 90 or so debate schmegeggies are left back home, not debating. They are certainly not with their coach, who is in the back of the room somewhere ten states away. By the same token, debaters who are on the TOC path disdain non-TOC tournaments. In fact, there are whole programs that disdain non-TOC tournaments. There’s a whole long and complex story here, but the thing is, woe be the tournament director who just wants to offer some debate to students in the region who are not TOC-hungry. First of all, too many students identify themselves as TOC-worthy, even though they don’t know a disad from a cronut, and turn their noses up at the events where they might have some good competition and learn something. They might even have to convince a judge who doesn't necessarily agree with their style and approach. Oh, the horror! Shouldn't all public speaking be aimed at people who already agree with you? Sigh. Second of all, when a program starts to decide where to spend its money, a tournament without bids falls to the bottom of the pack. How many tournaments can we all name that have been eviscerated by the once-shadowy TOC advisory committee by being stripped of their bids? I’ve been on that committee. A good tournament that deserves lots of bids is a tournament close to a member of the committee; a non-worthy tournament is one is the X region, where X is anywhere else, with "anywhere else" being defined as having too many bids already. The TOC committee invented fuzzy math. A simple formula of numbers and states, which was once the guideline, would be fine. A simple formula of asking a Star Chamber to pass judgment is not so fine. Think I’m being harsh? Want a list of the tournaments that used to be strong that are now begging for people to show up?

The TOC specifically is to blame for only some of this. It’s the idea of the TOC that is the problem. Is there a coach on the face of the earth who can’t go on at length about all the benefits of debate? Do any not agree on face that competition is the necessary evil for achieving most of debate’s benefits, that the actual debates per se, and the actual debating per se, is the least of it? Yet it is the coaches who promote the TOC mentality. It’s the coaches who pick the tournaments students attend, and who pick which of the students attend them, if there are restrictions of any sort. It’s the coaches who allow their circuit-level students the vile luxury of not being required to attend non-circuit tournaments, who don’t require their best debaters to judge at novice tournaments rather than gallivanting around from week to week somewhere else. Honestly, the serious TOC-level debater is one hell of intellect. They wouldn’t be there otherwise. Are they putting that intellect into furthering that debate resume so that they get into the right college (which they probably would have gotten into anyhow) or into training their novices and junior varsity and giving something to the debate community as a whole by attending the tournaments in the region that originally provided nourishment for that debater?

It’s all on the coaches.

Anyhow, without a national circuit—which seems an unlikely prospect at best—middle schools will never suffer the worse problems of these problems. But there is no doubt in my mind that a middle school national event, and training students for that event, will result in simply making matters worse for the TOC mentality in the high schools. I see little or no educational benefit to it. And if there is no educational benefit, then, well, what’s the point?

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In which the numbers are high

I know that you’re curious about such things, so I’ll pass the info along. Rather Large Bronx opened registration yesterday, and now has enough entries to fill a battleship. Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!

Like all good tournaments (and you know this of course because you are a sworn follower of my Tournament Director’s Toolkit), everything starts off as waitlist. This keeps out the riffraff, which all major tournaments attract despite any preventative protestations in the invitations. USDA-approved entries only? Yeah, but, we almost always pay and won’t cause much trouble until round three at which point our freshman PFer will slip on a papaya and break his whatsits and his parents will sue you until your school has nothing left but a leaky water fountain, half a piece of yellow chalk and the faint but pungent small of chlorine, while our judges will all disappear as soon as the sun is over the yardarm and the bar opens. Modern waitlist management, and best practices, demand that you wait a couple of weeks before clearing the waitlist, giving enough time for everyone to get a chance to register, including the handful taking that late vacation in the Norwegian fjords, and then choosing evenly amongst the pack rather than favoring those who clicked in first. The thing is, clicking in first is not a warrant for guaranteeing admission. Any clown with a clock can click in early. Clicking in wisely is better. With names, better yet. With judges, even better still. You’re bringing the max in every activity and want to hire 100% of your judging? I wonder how that will float with the Bronkwegian powers that be.

Speaking of which, am I the last person to learn that a person from Manchester, England (or, as theater buffs would put it, Manchester, England, England) is a Mancunian? How did this escape me for my entire lifetime? I could have used this information. Maybe I was so taken by Glaswegians that I got stuck like a broken record (which, if you’re young, is a phrase you can Google). Damn. You learn something every day (or every other day, if your attention tends to wander).

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In which we go nuclear

I have to admit that I don’t give LD topics much thought these days, if for no other reason than I’m pretty sure that no one ever really argues them anymore, at least in the places where I tend to hang out. And no one in their right mind is going to drag me in to judge a round no matter what the emergency, or more to the point, no emergency is so grave as to warrant my presence in the back of the room. On the other hand, I’m happy to judge the odd PF round, if there is such an emergency. Needless to say, the emergency has to be, at the minimum, a severed limb, but things like that have been known to happen, at least at $ircuit tournaments. At regional tournaments, the worst seems to be mostly heavy bruising and battered egos. Then again, I was just another rubber duckie in the PF pool at NDCA, and judged my fair share with great enthusiasm and enjoyment. I mean, I did get into this in the first place because I enjoyed it. And I can still enjoy a good round, but my personal definition of rounds probably excludes anything LDish beyond the odd novice bout as actually being a round, much less enjoyable.

Anyhow, countries ought to prohibit the production of nuclear power. When this first hit the shelves, it said states instead of countries, which was obviously enough of a non-starter that they changed it in the womb. My initial comment on it, back when I was making such comments, was that the word states rendered it impossible, and I thought it through no further. But as countries, it got the votes for September-October. Which makes you wonder. I read some commentary from Stefan B over the weekend that drove home the obvious: Go negative, young padowan.

Let’s see. Are we talking about nuclear weapons? Nuclear-powered submarines? Nuclear power? Fusion? Fission? All countries?

Wow. When it’s time to vote, there ought to be a rule that you actually have to think through the ramifications of the topic before you’re allowed to vote on it. Granted, this is more than we expect of people voting in, say, presidential primaries, but it might make a more balanced couple of months for the poor debaters out there in DebateLand. Then again, since they won’t be debating the resolution anyhow, it probably doesn’t matter.

It makes me happy to stay in the tab room. Unless, of course, there’s the odd surprise severed limb. I’ll be bringing Band-Aids, just in case.

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Coachean Life Coaching Day

I know you think you know everything, but you don't. Which is why Fridays are devoted to Coachean Life Coaching. Hie on over, young Padowan.

In which we are right, yet again

About 75% of the voters chose not to support the PF topic on schools going to your house and standing over your shoulder as you troll all your ex-friends on Twitter and Facebook. I'm glad to see it, although I admittedly did not necessarily predict it. The voters have chosen the less debatable topic in the past, so their preferences are no guarantee of much of anything. Of course, the topic that was chosen does have its problems, at least to me, but maybe that's because my default mindset is old LD, and we would have framed this as a basic rights issue, where the conflict is between the individual and some sort of society. Plus the added issue of this being the school vs the presumed child: what rights, if any, do children have? This becomes especially interesting when the presumed child is also the debater. 

At the old Hud, when this was an LD topic, we started thinking about the rez by trawling through court cases. There's plenty, and the discourse therein on both sides came up with numerous arguing points. Needless to say, we didn't argue that because the courts said something, it was right. We just used what the courts had said, pro and con, as fodder for our own arguments. But yet again, that's an LD approach. If PFers are going to launch evidence battles, as is their wont, one wonders what exactly counts as evidence. Will they be going extreme, because that's where the action (unfortunately) is? Beats me. In any case, I still think they're better off than they would have been with the other topic. Only time (all two months of it for Sept-Oct) will tell.

The reason I didn't post the last couple of days was that I was up lounging at Mohonk Mountain House, in the Shawangunk Mountains about an hour and a half from my house. Lots of hiking to earn the right to big hiker's meals, reading a book of my own choice (and then, to balance things, one for the DJ), watching Russian and non-Russian dancers and listening to a couple of flautists have at it, and generally letting my brain have a holiday. But now it's back for a while, until the next week off. I can't wait. I do love a good vacation.

Friday? You know what that means

Coachean Life Coaching is back with a new entry on acknowledging the little people. You can't afford not to read it.

In which we ramble pointlessly

The Bronxwegians asked me to post their judging request in various places. Curiously enough, I got more likes on that on Facebook than anything else I’ve posted in quite a while. I hope that means the people are just excited about the whole idea and immediately going to sign up to provide great judging, rather than that I’ve hit the nadir of my posting prowess, where the only thing that gets liked is my hawking the tournaments I attend. Of course, for me great judging is 1) hitting the start button when the round starts; 2) starting the round at the scheduled time; and 3) entering the decision about 45 minutes later. After that, I don’t care if your paradigm prefers whoever serves man (in the Twilight Zone sense of the phrase) best, since it’s up to the debaters to want you as a judge or not based on your preferences. I’m only looking for your efficiency. That’s all that matters in tab. Such is the world of MJP, and my main argument in favor of it. Do you really want me deciding who the best judge for you is? I didn’t think so.

This is the time of year when a lot of Facebook is devoted to people traveling the known universe and not thinking about forensics. I’ve seen posts from Middle Europe, the Iberian peninsula, France, etc., as well as all sorts of USA vacation spots. I have to say, it’s a welcome change from the norm. I obviously like forensics as much as the next person, but only if the next person actually doesn’t give a crap about winning every round and actually has some sort of interests beyond the 1AR. Means to an end and all that. My own travels this summer have been spare enough, including upper New York, the Shawangunks, the spring trip to WDW and eventually a week or so in NOLA (for the first time). I have to admit that while I enjoy the far flung,  I’m also usually quite satisfied with the nearer flung. There’s interesting stuff everywhere, if you just go seek it out. For that matter, I love just popping down to roam NYC on a regular basis. Art, food, hustle and bustle—what else does one need, especially when one’s DJ keeps one’s nose in a book?

Have I read any good books lately? I’d be happy to answer that, but not here. Too complicated. Any good movies? Well, as one might have predicted, buying a TV the size of Cleveland has redirected me from theaters to the family room, so I’m hardly up-to-date. The one thing I saw that surprised me was Ex Machina, which was much better than I expected. Otherwise pretty much what you’d expect. Any good music? I do like that the Olympics have pushed a lot of Brazilian playlists to the fore. I’m good on the basics, but I’m ready to go way deep. On the other hand, no matter what I name my playlists, Alexa always wants to play some other playlist. Bad Alexa! Bad! I’ve found that just asking for an artist (after switching the default to Spotify) is one’s best bet. Alexa, play some Harry Nilsson. You know I’m happy when Coconut comes on.

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