I’m just coming off a long and relatively unplugged weekend. This is a good thing for me. Consider: on my normal day, I fire up two browsers plus Tweetie, not to mention any DJ items, which tend to keep me occupied virtually 24/7 in the interstices of my existence (and, occasionally, the stices). Sometimes I need to look away from the computer; going into estivation slash summer mode, I don’t have to pay that much attention to debate life, which means there isn’t something constantly demanding my attention. All of this will be reflected here. I don’t stop blogging in the summer, but I don’t blog as much that’s newsworthy, so to speak. We get more general, more loose around the collar. We tend to talk more about the arts and theory and less about topics and tournaments. And I may miss a day or two here and there. To everything there is a season…
Remarkably enough, nevertheless, debate business is booming, and this weekend the discussion began about 2010’s UPenn tournament. Given that the Quakers won’t be on deck until Presidents’ Weekend (the only two Quaker presidents, according to the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting—this is hardly stuff I know off the top of my head—were Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon, which is the only thing so far that makes me wonder about the date), it does seem a bit early, but CP likes to keep everything organized far in advance, which is a good policy. Plus, the competition to the east will require early understanding on everyone’s part just what the alternative will be. Six rounds, varsity and novice LD, Ali H working on getting a good batch of hired judges, cheesesteaks delivered to the rounds, all the debating on Saturday and Sunday for easy arrival and a day off remaining when you leave, profits to charity: all of these are on the positive side. Enforced use of plain speech may be a problem, though. “Thy opponent owned thee,” would be a typical comment on the ballot, if they stuck with the Friends’ approach. Maybe I misread the invite, though. I mean, CP wrote it in Pages and saved it as a doc file, and when I tried to open it in Pages, it wasn’t happening, but I could open it in Word. Which is technology run amok, if you ask me.
By the way, Wikipedia says that the highest concentration of Quakers is in Africa. I had no idea.
By the way, with the coming of the off season there will be no lessening of articles in the Feed. They may not have specific topic focus, but then again, they hardly ever do. Articles of interest to the debating brain, is the way I think of it. There’s a lot of good stuff out there, and that’s what I’m passing along. If you’re not following it, you don’t know what you’re missing. No cat videos, I’m afraid, but, for instance, a chart of minorities showing who white voters are least likely to accept. (Atheists lost hands down, homosexuals are a close second.) Pretty good stuff. Delivered right to your door. Check it out!
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