I have seen the future

So I managed to judge a couple of rounds of Pffft on Saturday. With all the complications of varsity judging novices and adult judges in LD and Pffft, it was something of a busy tab room, although I have to admit there were no problems with not one not two but three iterations of the new software. Amazin', as we used to say about the Mets. I tried to zip a copy of the old file to O'C, but when I did I stopped hearing from him. By then he had probably had enough of me, the blizzard and Texas, in that order. So it goes.

My point, anyhow, is that I enjoyed the Pffft. The idea that you needed a little bit of evidence for your side but a good bit of knowledge to rebut, and that you focus on just a point or two made for interesting clash. And it's over before you know it. Hard to imagine them running a theory of Pffft argument, if you know what I mean (although someone could have no doubt argued 20 years ago that it would be hard to imagine anyone running a theory of LD argument). The Israeli topic is a hard one, by me a lot harder than a lot of the others I've seen, and I applaud those folks I watched who were debating it. Regis took the final; CLG and I were in agreement, as was our third confrere. If LD is going to go down the tubes, which seems more than likely at this point, it's nice to know there's something there to replace it with some real potential. Mix a little speaking ability, a lot of research, and a little case writing, and you've got something pretty good. You'll lose the philosophical underpinnings, but then again, in an activity that thinks that Derrida and Baudrillard are philosophers with more weight than [name any 20 off the top of your head], we may not be losing all that much.

Speaking of LD going down the tubes, let's see. Pffft has planted a flag at TOCs, so that's step one. Pffft is about to plant a flag at CatNats (where there is no dearth of parents to judge it). I'm thinking of doing Pffft at Bump (maybe putting aside 10 Policy rooms, which means another nail in THAT particular coffin). I'm getting seriously tired of hounding the LDers to provide parental judges to cover their entries. When a given tournament offers strikes, everyone inevitably strikes the people with Mr in front of their name, which only makes it even more likely that Mister won't show up next time, and certainly keeps Mister that much more inexperienced. LDEP and the proverbial call to arms is winding down to, at best, a call to fingers, and not many of them. I hold out less hope as each day progresses that this particular group will martial its forces and make anything happen.

And will I miss LD? I don't know. If I refocus on Pffft, it will mean there's plenty of Pffft around, it means the topic changes all the time, which I love, and I won't have to contend with speed or non-resolutional argumentation or bogus scholarship. Will I miss LD? Ultimately, it's really hard to say. But if I had to bet, I would bet that, miss it or not, I won't be doing it.