Declaimers versus the Heavyweight Wrestling team; the Platonic K; And you call yourself a Replicant?

For the third time now I’ve heard debate cited as the juxtaposition against athletics in the CatNats resolution. Including forensics in the fine arts is a stretch, to put it mildly. No one defining fine arts in a vacuum, or enumerating the fine arts, would naturally include debate. Of course, even if it were one of the fine arts, it wouldn’t be particularly useful to argue it in this rez, I would imagine, because it would be the fine art most like athletics vis-à-vis its competitive essence, and therefore the least useful for making any distinction between the two sides. Nevertheless, I point this out because it could be something you hear in a round or two, and far be it for me to want to see you taken by surprise.

I got back onto the Cat Track from listening to the latest Loquitor interview this morning. Yet another disinterested observer couldn’t get his mind around a conflict between the two sides, seeing both as essential to secondary education. Which makes one think, wait a minute, what we have here is the absolute, quintessential critique possibility. (And if I remember correctly, JV commented something along these lines as he applauded himself for not having any LDers going to CatNats.) Fine arts and athletics are both requirements for good education. Forcing a choice between the two requirements would be, therefore, bad for education. Hence, accepting the premise of the resolution is bad for education, and presumably the CFL is bad for education, and if you can’t make the quintessential K out of that then you’ve been watching too way many episodes of “American Idol” lately and your brain just isn’t doing the job anymore. This is, of course, different from the abstention neg: the ab neg actually believes that the non-choice position is a true reading of the resolution, and, as I’ve said, a self-delusional clever-devil reading at that. It is more than likely that the clever devil ab neg has, in fact, also watched way too many episodes of “American Idol” and would therefore not know a kritik from a tire iron. Not that I would ever recommend running a K, of course, even when, for once, it is the absolutely correct neg strategy, but I will point out that in this case, despite the perfection of the concept, running that K is a virtually guaranteed loss. Sure: let’s run a case saying that the CFL is anti-education, in front of a panel of three CFL educators. That ought to turn out well.

On another note altogether, I listened this morning (it was a long morning) to a couple of Philosophy Bites. I hasten to point out that it’s Philosophy Bites and not Philosophy Bites. In any case, Stephen Muhall on film as philosophy went into great detail on “Blade Runner,” making it a shoo-in for the O’C iPod. I also listened to Richard Tuck on Free Riding, which is about an area of vagueness that, unlike the frustratingly twee episode I listened to on free will, is both totally impossible and wonderfully fascinating at the same time. I now know what the Sorites Paradox is, or more to the point, I know a heap about the Sorites Paradox. Occasionally philosophy doesn’t bite at all. And remarkably enough, they’re claiming on their website that they’re in the iTunes top 30. You’ve gotta love podcast listeners, if that’s true. If there were more of us there’d be fewer Howard Sternses. And if that’s not an admirable goal, I don’t know what is.

Oh. Wait. I forgot to count down to the TOC. Okay. Here we go: 22. Whew. Almost forgot that. The VCA would kill me in my sleep if I were to be so lax. Coming tomorrow: 21!