New lamps (or LD) for old

And so, we TVFT’d last night.

It’s been a while. We had started on this year’s potential LD resolutions, and did the first six, and then vacations and whatnot came along, so there you are. Voting is over, but it wasn’t as if we were trying to get people to agree with us. We just had stuff to say, so we went on with the final four. We also talked a tad about Sept-Oct.

One thing that came up was what is becoming a clear distinction between old and new LD. I can’t exactly articulate it yet, but it goes beyond the simple ability to label the parts of the machine. That is, in the past, we always had to deal with abusive cases and turns and whatnot, but we did it instinctively, whereas now, the rhetorical tools are more in hand and clearly defined. This may make rounds clearer, in some instances. No, it’s more a sense of how a topic is handled overall. For instance, we talked about no gov v. bad gov. In the past, it was always extremely philosophical, and one of the joys of the rez was its unreality. But in today’s environment, either it would not be run philosophically, or its un-real-worldness would be used against it in theory arguments. The bottom line is that the real world has absolutely taken root in LD. I’m often saying how a topic looks more PF than LD to me, but I may be offbase on that. The approaches in rounds may be different, but LD looks just as much to the real world these days as PF does. We start talking about policies, not qua policy debate, but simply as government actions, and then analyze the desirability of those actions or the lack thereof. It’s hard for me to shake off the dust of old LD, especially as I do less of it and move over to PF. That doesn’t make it go away, though. It just means that there are things in the world I might not know so much about anymore. So it goes.

I’ve launched the Navy into another bout of recruitment, as much as I can between now and next week’s meeting. Hearing O’C talk about the ten thousand noobs that turned up at his first meeting does make me a tad jealous. In fact, during the recording he was spending a lot of time answering their emails. He claimed he was multitasking, but the amount of time he was spending with us versus them led to the suggestion that, in fact, he was simply tasking elsewhere.

I’m taking this weekend off, starting tomorrow, the last opportunity before the machine is engaged. The Pups looks fine, with a nice strong VLD judge pool. The numbers are getting where they belong between drops and waitlist fixes. Then it’s on to the Workshop the following week, which I think will be especially filled with new teams this year, from all the interest we’ve been getting in the region. New teams, alas, don’t necessarily stick for the duration, but you won’t get anything if you don’t try. The fact that the MHL is free to new programs is, I think, very encouraging. I would encourage other organizations, especially in today’s economic climate, to think along similar lines. Once we get people hooked, then we can soak them. But let’s get them hooked first.