The calm before the schoolyear storm

Curiously, someone asked that I distill the discussion of truth and ethics. Well, if I could do that, we probably wouldn't need the discussion. But how about thinking that I'm proposing that, in LD, the affirmative's burden is to ethically support an afffirmation of the resolution, while the negative's burden is to ethically support a negation of the resolution. This is radically different from saying that the aff must prove the res true, and the neg must prove it not true. See? It may even force both sides to have offensive positions, but I haven't thought that through yet. As I've often said, the strongest negative positions are inherently offensive, but there are plenty of negs out there that simply say no to the aff, and there's more to it than that, or there should be. The phrase, the best defense is an offense, isn't a cliche for nothing.

We are about 90% ready to move back into chez HQ, although there's some rug-laying that will hold back finality for a few more weeks. I spent the entire weekend throwing away books (actually, putting them out to be donated to the library) and dusting off the keepers. One does accumulate a lot of crap if one is even a marginally big reader, and when there's two readers in the house (and there used to be three), the accumulation is pretty wild. Meanwhile I've been holed up upstairs, endlessly ripping disks. It turns out that too much meditation was worthless. A 60 gig iPod holds just about everything you want it to hold. Some things don't make sense (really sensitive Faure, for instance), but there's no point picking and choosing among show disks: just throw on all the ones you like. Kt and I had much discussion of Sweeney, and I think we agreed that it was the blasting of the pipes that kept it from being something you wanted to listen to through headphones.

Also, I'm prepping up for the opening meetings. The cur is okay for kids, but needs a whole bunch o' work on the parent side, especially with an early Bump. Sept and Oct are going to be awfully busy with two or three meetings some weeks, what with parents and breaking up the team into novices and fogies, and chezzes and the like, and Bump planning. I'm going to enjoy this last week before the storm, and take a break from any Nostrum recording or anything like real debate work (aside from reading Robert the G's cases for the RR).

And finally, a question. Couldn't they find any British actors to play the leads in V for Vendetta? I mean, their accents weren't bad--there was no Dick Van Dyke-like Berts--but there's this whole island of pretty decent real British people, so why use ersatz British people? Quid pro quo on Hugh Laurie? Oh well, that's what I mean by taking time off from real debate work, and concentrating on the important things in life.