In which we go into outer and inner space

Debate: We talked last week about Harvard being a great way to spend too much money for a debate tournament. While I was home watching the golf at Pebble Beach—nice try, Scottie—dispatches arrived regularly from the front in Cambridge. Draw your own conclusions. 

Given their top-dollar price tag, you wouldn’t expect that at one venue they’re using the stairwell alcoves as debate spaces, but then again, given the teeming millions that they let in, it would appear, without any caps, you probably should expect it. They sent a message asking everyone to be quiet around the stairs, a great solution to overcrowding. At one debate venue, the wifi went out for the weekend, which is sort of like turning off the electricity and then announcing that they’ve also run out of candles and fireplace logs. In one building students were banned from bringing in water bottles. Today’s youths thrive on water, living under the darkest of clouds of potential dehydration. I mean, you might as well take away their wifi if you’re going to take away their water. And let’s face it, you’ll need to hydrate if you have to climb five flights of stairs to a JV PF round. (Fortunately I think this wasn’t the building where the stairs were otherwise packed with forensicians going at it full-bore.) My favorite was the Sunday message in the evening asking for any judge within a 20-minute radius to come back and take a speech round in one of three events, even though the round in one of the events had already happened. Much of the Sunday schedule went kablooie, it seems, but who knows why. As far as I know none of my tabbing colleagues were working the tournament. Hmmm...

Books (audio division): I finished volume skaty-eight of Ken Lozito’s First Colony series and have loaded volume skate-eighty-eight onto my cue. These are old-fashioned (in many, many ways) space opera, and either you like ‘em or you don’t, if one were to go by the comments. I think of them as the perfect audiobooks for an hour of mindless daily walking exercise, and they’re salted throughout my library. The narrator is the ubiquitous Scott Aiello which, if you’re an audiobook fan, should tell you a lot. You might like these, you might not. If you do like ‘em, there’s a lot of ‘em, so you’ll be set for life. In other words, if you like space opera, give 'em a try. 

In which we cost a pretty penny

It’s the weekend, so just some glancing blows. 

Debate: The Harvard tournament is this weekend. Back in the day I used to tell my students that attending the Harvard tournament is completely unrelated to attending Harvard. In fact, winning the Harvard tournament is completely unrelated to attending Harvard. (Winning any Ivy tournament is unrelated to attending that Ivy, for that matter.) Let's look at one example. This year they’re listing 378 entries in varsity PF. The entry fee is $180. That’s $68,040 revenue, for one event. And they are conducting every other forensic event known to humankind, with similar numbers. In PF they are also listing 443 judges. My guess is that maybe one or two of those judges, at the very least the ones without paradigms, are, shall we say, not exactly the person you want in the back of the room when you’ve paid almost two hundred bucks to challenge 377 other competitors. (And of course anything we say here about money elides the the facts that: 1) you have to get to Cambridge in the first place, which many people do from rather startling distances, and 2) you have to get a hotel room or two in one of the most expensive cities in the country.) I’ve always said that you have to be very, very good to do well at Harvard, but that being very, very good is no guarantee of doing well. The numbers are simply against you. Yet people go, year after year, for one reason: the name of the tournament. The competition numbers rig the odds against you before you even sign up on tabroom, and you can blow your entire season’s budget on a handful of JVers in non-bid events. If this were called the Hubba Hubba Faceoff instead of the Harvard Invitational, would you even give it a second’s thought?

Oh yeah. There’s nowhere to park, either. 

Books (audio division): I gave up listening to H. G. Parry’s Declaration of the Rights of Magicians. This is the first of his Shadow Histories series, and it really is about human rights, albeit applied to the use of magic, peopled by real historical figures. I should have liked this on all counts, but I just couldn’t get into it. I’ve done one other Parry book in the past, however—The Magician’s Daughter—and I enjoyed that one quite a bit, so I guess it’s just this series that didn’t do it for me. 

In which we talk about good debate citizens

We are in a hiatus for Presidents’ Day. It kicks off with the Harvard Tournament (don’t get me started on that one) and then everyone goes to Goa for winter break. Next up on my agenda is the Westchester Classic in a couple of weeks, about which much might be said when the time comes. 

Meanwhile, there is a concept we casually refer to as being a good debate citizen. There is, to begin with, a debate community. This community is a complicated organism that comprises everything from simple two-school weekday afternoon scrimmages to the NSDA and NCFL mega-tournaments to National $ircuit tournaments where rich schools travel across the country to purchase their TOC bids. In the middle of the debate community is the bread-and-butter of local tournaments, often within a local or state organization. Whichever, big or small, it is all one community, with many different speech and debate activities, and many different approaches to those speech and debate activities. And everyone in that community is a debate citizen, one way or another.

So what is a good debate citizen? In a word, it is someone who prioritizes forensics overall as compared to their own particular interests. It is someone who believes that debate (and here I’m including speech but I don’t want to keep saying speech-and-debate or the more complete but non-mellifluous forensics) is intrinsically of value, and aims whatever they do toward the end of supporting that value. It is not about their own team winning competitions, although of course they support their students and applaud their wins and commiserate over their losses. It is not about their personal idea of what debate ought to be, where they are right and everyone else is wrong. It is not about ignoring your region in aid of bigger goals, being willing to travel to Cooch Behar to get a bid while ignoring the local high school event just around the corner. Being a good debate citizen, in a nutshell, is doing whatever it takes to get students—all students—as many rounds as possible. It is seeing debate in the broadest terms of education. It is seeing competition as a necessary evil, a means to an end, that end being education. 

Why do I bring all this up? No specific reason, no recent slight or malfeasance, but I think it always bears mentioning, because it underscores everything we do. In a world today where knowledge is under attack, where history is being rewritten in the most bluntly Orwellian fashion, where free speech is a commodity limited by what that speech is saying and who is doing the speaking, where freedom is limited to what other people say you should be or do, the activities of the debate community are in the foreground of true learning, of true free speech, of true personal freedom. Being a good debate citizen, putting the activity above your own interests in that activity, is what keeps this whole thing going. And keeping this thing going means putting out into the world educated human beings who have the personal ammunition to withstand the worst a blighted national culture throws at them. Will truth win in the end? I don’t know. But at least good debate citizens are doing their best to arm their soldiers the battle for it.  

In which we have our heads in a book

Have Jim Butcher’s Dresden novels made it to the top of the Times bestseller list before? His latest immediately hit the top—more power to him—and I was reminded of an old saw in my Day Job, where we reckoned the best way to get on the Times bestseller list was to have been on the Times bestseller list in the past. There were a lot of reasons for this, and I won’t go through them now, but we thought this because some writers who had once been strong were now putting out something less than their best work, and nevertheless they were selling like the proverbial hotcakes. Authors’ names became brands, and people mulishly stuck to brandnames. I don’t think this is true of Butcher, though, that he’s past his prime. I like the Dresden books, but it’s some of his other work that I am really big on. The Codex Alera books were big hits with all of the DJ staff, and we passed these audiobooks around to practically everyone in the building. The Cinder Spires series is equally as good. Wikipedia says this new steampunk-ish series going to comprise nine books. I’m up-to-date, and a lot of books short of a nonet. C’mon, Jim!

In other publishing news, there have been a bunch of articles lately about the death of rack-size paperbacks. In a nutshell, as a business they’ve been replaced by e-books. I mean, I certainly do 90% of my reading on my Kindle, so I’m not surprised at this. Still, one can remember certain moments in one’s life that revolved around the little paperbacks. My parents used to dump me in the book section of Macy’s when I was a kid just past the Hardy Boys, and I could hang out there for hours. Later, in my adolescence, when one arrived at Grand Central Terminal for one reason or another there was a vast paperback collection at the bookseller downstairs, and walking through it one learned what literature was all about just by seeing the books there in real life. In the 70s there was a used paperback bookstore down the street from us on Columbus Avenue, which is now all mall franchise stores without the mall. It was from these piles of paperbacks in the mystery section that I randomly picked up a copy of Rex Stout’s The Doorbell Rang, and have since lost track of how many times I’ve visited the brownstone on 35th Street. At a church flea market in the 80s I bought half a dozen little Oz paperbacks when my daughter was 7 or so, having no idea that there was more than one of them, and subsequently spent countless hours thereafter reading them aloud, and every single other Baum and R.P. Thompson book we could get our hands on. 

So I wonder how the serendipity of book discovery will proceed in the future. The good news is that the number of independent booksellers in the US is growing, so the act of roaming the aisles and just absorbing the titles and the genres and the names of the authors will continue, but maybe a cheap portable book will no longer cap this particular journey. But books will survive. Reading is an elitist activity that helps define civilization. It opens us up to minds other than our own, going back as long as the written word has existed. It will keep on keeping on, one way or the other. 

In which we listen so that you don't have to

Music (audit division): There’s been a lot of movement in the audit queue that I haven’t been talking about. Time to catch up.

“Odyssey and Oracle” by the Zombies. There are those who place this among the rock album GOATs, and I have listened to it many times trying to figure out why. It’s not that I disliked it, but I didn’t find it particularly special. On this go-round, on the other hand, I really started to enjoy it. I may not be ready to put it into my own GOAT collection, but I put it right back into heavy rotation for another listen. All of which demonstrates how sometimes you have to give music a chance in order to appreciate it. (The album was released in 1968, so we're talking a lot of chances here. But over the years one kept seeing it come up in the conversation.) There has been enough music in my life over the years for me to realize that some music takes time and to act accordingly. Yes, more often than not you can dismiss something immediately for one reason or another (see below), but you need to discriminate. Is it an artist you’ve always otherwise liked? Was it really highly recommended by someone whose taste is similar to yours? Is it just different from what you’re used to? Be careful. A second listen never hurt anyone. 

Next up, the Mavericks, their self-titled album. I liked them back when they first arrived on the scene, and I had a few of their albums on cassette back when one had albums on cassette. It is a cliché that rock and roll died back in the 70s and was reborn as country, and the Mavericks are proof positive of this. They show a lot of influences, and when they’re country, well, they're good enough country if you're in the mood, but when they rock, they absolutely do rock. An easy group to like. 

The group Peppermint Trolley Company brought us the original theme song to “The Brady Bunch.” Having never watched the TV show (I was in college when it came on the tube; it was aimed at the generation a decade younger than mine), I wasn’t inclined to appreciate this album from yet-another psychedelic 60s band. After listening to them, I am still not inclined to appreciate them. Not bad, just run-of-the-mill stuff in the shadow of the real thing. That I never heard of them at the time (as I say, I was in college, and like everyone I knew, an avid music fan) is pretty telling. I have this vision of some middle-aged record executive puffing on his cigar and saying "That's what the kids like nowadays so let's throw it against the wall and see if it sticks." This one didn't.

The Rising Sons is early work—1971—by, most notably, Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal. Definitely of historical value and perfectly listenable. 

Foxy Shazam: See above where I say that often you can dismiss something immediately. For me, this group fits that bill perfectly. Contemporary heavy metal, I guess. I didn’t listen to enough of it to pin it down. The Skip to the Next Song button was invented for a reason. Skip. Skip. Skip. Skip...

Moving right along. Next up was Shelby Lynne, the “Restless” album. Again with the country music slash rock music. I am a BIG fan of Lynne, especially her Dusty Springfield album, but most everything else too. “Restless” is among her best. (Not that you care, but Lynne is the former sister-in-law of the artist Steve Earle, also a favorite of mine. Steve Earle has been married 6 or 7 times, depending on how you count a rematch.) (Another curiosity: Lynne won a Best New Artist 1999 Grammy for her sixth album.)

The next thing that popped up in the queue was a single song from a group called Sand. I have no idea why. In a word, not my cup of chamomile. 

Finally, the group Grapefruit. I wanted to dismiss this quickly but I decided that, as noted above, sometimes you have to give music another chance. The stuff was catchy enough, but didn’t resonate. Given its Apple Publishing roots, I figure I’ll try again with their compilation album “Yesterday’s Sunshine.” It can’t hurt.

In which YOU get to decide

 

Hey, kids! Now you can play our game at home, starting with that old favorite: WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

Early in the day I had eyes on a student judge who I could tell was, to be gentle about it, ill-prepared for her inaugural adventures at the back of the room. Sure enough, she didn’t acknowledge her ballot for round one—the most important thing I tell people they have to do when I conduct an opening judge meeting, which some people actually hear and pay attention to—but I had just seen her in the tab room and then heading up toward the debate room, so I knew things were at least going to happen, if not exactly according to Hoyle. Since it was a tight tournament, she got another ballot for round 2. Lo and B, she didn’t acknowledge that ballot either. And this time she didn’t show up. Before long one of the teams she should have been judging, and their coach, came into tab to set things aright. I got the message and told the team to go back up to the room and wait for me to find a solution. Then I went out into the hall where I know there was an available judge lounging about, and sent him up to the room to take over. And then, back in tab I slotted him in and removed the prodigal missing judge. 

Keep in mind that some time had passed. Up went the substitute judge to the third floor, and shortly thereafter down came the substitute judge from the third floor. Not only had the prodigal missing first judge finally showed up, despite no longer being listed as the judge, but the other team—not the ones who were in tab with me and their coach—was asserting that the first team needed to forfeit because they had showed up late for the round. (One never did find out where the other team was through all of this before now.) The prodigal judge, happy, I guess, to be relieved of duty, accepted this and sent the teams on their way. What, the substitute judge asked, happens now? We were more than a half hour away from start time, and both teams had dispersed into the ether, thinking that the round was a forfeit. 

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

Well, here’s what I did. First, I swallowed my inclination to find and throttle the delinquent judge—I simply removed her from the pool for the rest of the day—and then subsequently I swallowed my inclination to find and throttle the other team that had unacceptably asserted that a forfeit was demanded. For the record, we tell the judges that only tab can declare a forfeit. But a team declaring one? Jeesh. For one reason or another by now it was too late to simply hold the round, even if I could find the missing teams in the labyrinth that is Bronx Science. 

There was no question that the first team was not late for the round, because they were in tab telling me about their missing judge, who I then replaced, so you might say they had a really good excuse for their so-called tardiness, if you wish to call it that. But on the other hand, say what you will, the other team was right in that the first team had been AWOL way after forfeit time. 

What I did was a double bye. If the coach of the other team had been at the tournament, we would have had a congenial little discussion (I don’t mean that sarcastically) to enlighten his students about rules and protocols, as they had veered parlously close to unacceptable arrogance in the situation. But, sadly, that team was in the hands of mere chaperones. If I had not been literally alone in the tab room at the time, maybe something else would have been decided. But it just happened that I was all on my lonesome for that particular piece of time, and perhaps running 8 divisions by oneself with all sorts of judge balancing does stifle one’s creativity a bit. 

What would you have done?

In which we stop to smell the non-roses

Saw a preview of the New York Botanical Garden's 2026 Orchid Show last night. I would say it's the best one ever, designed by someone called Mister Flower Fantastic. (There's an article about him in today's NY Times.) I can't recommend it highly enough. It goes away some time in April. If you can, catch it at night. Great lighting in the dark.

Books: Embassytown by China Mieville. Finished this one yesterday. Mieville is concerned here with the meaning of language, which might hold some interest for the odd structuralist debater out there. Along the way, his world-creating is way above average. Another one I'd definitely recommend. 

Debate: The Bronx Winter Local registration closed yesterday. Today it's all the setting up behind the scenes. One of the key things to do is to isolate the high school graduate judges in the JV/Novice pools and pull them in to judge the Varsity kids. In judging, variety is the spice of life. And just because a coach has only a couple of novices in the game tomorrow doesn't mean they shouldn't handle a varsity round or two. It's all in the pooling. When folks register their judges they're asked to identify them as either students or HS grads. With that info in hand, I can then do a bit of scraping around. I mean, there's more to tabbing a tournament than hitting the Make It So button and watching everyone immediately rush to their rounds. (Come to think of it, hardly anyone ever does immediately rush to their rounds. There are some judges especially who like to play hard to get. Which is why at tournaments I wear both good walking shoes and a grim expression. It's the perfect combination.)