It seems that one way to turn the notification feature in tabroom, and all the automatic posting features for that matter, from occasional niceties to normal life is to do them pretty much everywhere every time. CP concurs. Granted that in some venues (e.g., Scarsdale), the likelihood of getting cell service is virtually nil, except for that one spot next to the elevator on the third floor, and only if you’re standing on one leg and rubbing your belly and patting your head at the same time and there happens to be an AT&T truck driving by at just that moment. It will spread as more people use it and pass the word along. At the Tiggers, we were complaining that it seemed difficult to set up, and then some kid walked along and demonstrated that you click here and here and that’s all there is to it.
)(*#^%^% kid!
Anyhow, that will be the mantra (using the automated features, not swearing at that wiseass kid at Princeton). We’ll start at Ridge.
Met with the Sailors last night. I think that the newbies were rather shocked that we’re onto a new topic (Jan-Feb) before they’ve debated the present topic (Nov-Dec). Downside of Modest Novice? Actually, I think it’s more like inattention on their part. Time moves quickly in the debate universe. If you’re not paying attention, half the year can go by and you’re lucky if you’ve gotten more than 4 rounds in. Not good. Fortunately, Jan-Feb at the novice level isn’t terribly off the orthodoxy scale, with all kinds of underpinnings of social contract and the like. Of course, I’m much more interested in the more serious issues of imprisonment, which I often allude to with posts in the Coachean Feed. The prison system, and criminal justice in general, is ludicrous in the US. There are an amazing number of approaches to the rez, if one wants. In my original post on this year's topics, I gave this a 7 out of 10. I like it, although I have some reservations about its durability for the Jan-TOC span. We’ll see, or more to the point, you’ll see. I’ll be in tab.
As for the Pffft topic, I think I like it. On the one hand it forces students to get a grasp of campaign spending in general, and the history of CU and McCain-F and so forth, and then it asks for very specific research on the effects. This can probably be combined with interesting analytics for pretty good arguments, and people will learn a lot. That’s good. More topics should be like this.
I did give a sneak preview of a couple of the topic areas for this Christmas season’s episode of Bean Trivia. No Disney categories? The look of astonishment on their little faces was startling. Of course, they never know the Disney answers, which means that they have to text O’C or the daughter as lifelines, and they know them all upside down, so what's the point? Anyhow, new areas include dogs, the American Songbook and fill in the Beatles blank only it isn’t the Beatles. Some other group, about the same vintage as the Fab Four. (Real tough, huh? Duh. I promise no classics from "Their Satanic Majesties Request.") Also introducing side bets on the lifelines, where everyone else can parlay a few extra beans into a bowl of chili by guessing if either of the above or our illustrious speech coach can answer the question correctly. Hmmm. Put your beans where your mouth is, I always say.
Wednesday, December 05, 2012
Tuesday, December 04, 2012
Debate: Moving right along
First of all, I’m glad to see that the Pope will soon be tweeting. Unfortunately, I can’t think of anything to say that isn’t irretrievably offensive, so I’ll keep my mouth shut.
The thing about tournaments is that, an hour later, you’re ready for another one. Just as the Tiggers are finishing up, the Gem of Harlem kicks into gear. They’ve got plenty of people registered, although there seemed to be some inadvertent slippage off the waitlist. CP reset it back to zero for me. The Gems are meeting today to begin getting rooms, always a tough process for them. I should start pulling people off the waitlist by the end of the week, starting with the long-distance folk (but not the long-distance folk that last year blew us off in favor of doing the NY club scene or whatever, or the long-distance folk who didn’t pick up their Sunday morning ballots at the Tiggers, etc., etc.) and the reliable friends of the tournament. One big problem will be assembling the tab room. I was hoping to corral CP himself, but he’ll be doing sleepy time down south, and Catholic Charlie is going all Catholic on us with some CFL meeting (no doubt discussing the Pope’s tweets). Oh, well. I’m not worried. I just need to find out who’s going to be around.
Coming up this weekend is Ridge. Nice and compact after sending people far and wide last weekend, although the numbers are pretty high. I’ve been going to Ridge for a while, perhaps from when it first started, and always liked it. I remember in the beginning when Dario was still there and the computers would turn off automatically at 10:00 pm and we’d unexpectedly lose all the data; this was before we all had more laptops than we know what to do with. I remember the year we tried the Indigo hotel, with smell-o-vision or whatever it was, and no one could find the place. I’ve always enjoyed the look on Y’s face when any of the tabbers slipped out to grab a latte or something down the road, as if we were abandoning him to the wolves. As far as tournament management is concerned, it’s a Machine, with Ridge kids everywhere doing what they’re supposed to do (or else, I guess, Y feeds them to the wolves). And one high point is this hidden little burger and shake place downtown. I’d highly recommend it, but if I told you about it, it would be even more crowded, so you’re on your own.
Tonight we’ll meet at Sailorville (last week was cancelled for yet more bad weather—we have not had a good run this season) and talk about the new topics. I like the subjects, but I’m not yet sure one way or the other on the PF wording. As for LD, it’s so old it’s got a beard, but there’s nothing wrong with that, and it’s as solid as the day is long for the endless stretch that is theoretically Jan-Feb. On the home front, we’re also champing at the bit to do a new TVFT, where I want to talk about Academy. We had thought of doing it on the fly at the Tiggers, but as always, there really wasn’t any fly to do it on. Oh, well. We’ll get to it, probably next week.
The thing about tournaments is that, an hour later, you’re ready for another one. Just as the Tiggers are finishing up, the Gem of Harlem kicks into gear. They’ve got plenty of people registered, although there seemed to be some inadvertent slippage off the waitlist. CP reset it back to zero for me. The Gems are meeting today to begin getting rooms, always a tough process for them. I should start pulling people off the waitlist by the end of the week, starting with the long-distance folk (but not the long-distance folk that last year blew us off in favor of doing the NY club scene or whatever, or the long-distance folk who didn’t pick up their Sunday morning ballots at the Tiggers, etc., etc.) and the reliable friends of the tournament. One big problem will be assembling the tab room. I was hoping to corral CP himself, but he’ll be doing sleepy time down south, and Catholic Charlie is going all Catholic on us with some CFL meeting (no doubt discussing the Pope’s tweets). Oh, well. I’m not worried. I just need to find out who’s going to be around.
Coming up this weekend is Ridge. Nice and compact after sending people far and wide last weekend, although the numbers are pretty high. I’ve been going to Ridge for a while, perhaps from when it first started, and always liked it. I remember in the beginning when Dario was still there and the computers would turn off automatically at 10:00 pm and we’d unexpectedly lose all the data; this was before we all had more laptops than we know what to do with. I remember the year we tried the Indigo hotel, with smell-o-vision or whatever it was, and no one could find the place. I’ve always enjoyed the look on Y’s face when any of the tabbers slipped out to grab a latte or something down the road, as if we were abandoning him to the wolves. As far as tournament management is concerned, it’s a Machine, with Ridge kids everywhere doing what they’re supposed to do (or else, I guess, Y feeds them to the wolves). And one high point is this hidden little burger and shake place downtown. I’d highly recommend it, but if I told you about it, it would be even more crowded, so you’re on your own.
Tonight we’ll meet at Sailorville (last week was cancelled for yet more bad weather—we have not had a good run this season) and talk about the new topics. I like the subjects, but I’m not yet sure one way or the other on the PF wording. As for LD, it’s so old it’s got a beard, but there’s nothing wrong with that, and it’s as solid as the day is long for the endless stretch that is theoretically Jan-Feb. On the home front, we’re also champing at the bit to do a new TVFT, where I want to talk about Academy. We had thought of doing it on the fly at the Tiggers, but as always, there really wasn’t any fly to do it on. Oh, well. We’ll get to it, probably next week.
How to be a good debate citizen
Or, 25 steps to a better you.
1. Don’t ask questions because you’re too lazy to look something up. Especially don’t ask questions that would make someone else have to look it up for you.
2. Show up and stay showed up until you’re no longer needed. Then go away.
3. Be the first one to pick up your ballots.
4. Be the first one to get your ballots back to tab.
5. If you have friends in the tab room, they will have had dinner with you the night before. If they didn’t have dinner with you the night before, you do not have friends in the tab room, and you should go hang out somewhere else.
6. Cover all your judging, and if you’re a big school, bring a couple extra. Be a giver, not a taker. If none of your alums are willing to come back to judge, you’re doing something wrong. If none of your upperclassmen will judge underclassmen, you’re doing something really wrong.
7. Do not use foul language with the students you are judging. You may have been brought up in a manure pile, but some of them do not like to find themselves awash in your vulgarities. Also, "You effed up, dude," is not exactly a constructive criticism.
8. Do not expect anyone to read your paradigm past the sentences that say a) that you are fine with speed and b) that you will vote on theory. The rest is just nonsense.
9. If you are asked to text your decision, you might want to text your decision; it’s so much easier than coming up with an excuse for not texting your decision. And if you don’t know how to text, how can you possibly know how to judge?
10. If you do something really stupid, join the club. Admit it, and move on. Just don’t do it again. And again. And again.
11. Do not imbibe alcoholic beverages if there is a possibility that you will have to judge within the next six hours. You’re not that wonderful to begin with. You intoxicated is even less wonderful.
12. Ear buds should be in your pocket, not in your ears, when you are judging.
13. Double thirties in a round, while acting as proof positive that you do not have a clue how to judge, do not give any real indication of how well the debaters did. Don’t do it.
14. The tab room does not have your missing ballots. The tab room does not have anyone’s missing ballots, including its own. We haven't gotten a complete set of all of our ballots in our packets since that one time back in 1997. Why should you be any different?
15. Since it is never all right for you not to fulfill your judging obligation, don’t bother to ask if you really have to come back tomorrow morning. You do.
16. It’s Mutual Judge Preference, not Most Preferred Judging. If your debater got a 4 judge, so did their opponent. That was the best we could do. It’s called an even playing field. If you want more 1s, rank more people as 1s.
17. If you think there’s a ballot error, act quickly. Depending on the error, the further away we are from its occurrence, the harder it is to fix. The tab room does not think it is perfect; far from it. We’ll take accuracy however we can get it.
18. Smoke when you’re not obligated to do anything else, not instead of being where we can find you when we need you. Better yet, quit smoking. With the cost of cigarettes what it is these days, you could be saving enough money to buy a new iPad. Every week.
19. Don’t complain to the tab room that you’re too tired to judge. We’re too tired to tab, and we were here before you arrived today and we’re going to be here after you’re gone tonight, so if you’ve ever wondered what the expression “falling on deaf ears” is all about, this is it.
20. Don’t complain to tab that you’ve had to judge every round. Your debaters have had to debate every round, haven’t they? You haven’t heard them complaining. Not to mention that we’ve had to tab every round. Besides, what else are you going to do in a high school on a Saturday afternoon? This isn’t Disneyland, you know.
21. Ascertain beyond all doubt who you have with you on the team and judging when you arrive at registration, and even more important, relay that information to the proper authorities. Why else do you think we’re asking you to check over your registration?
22. Pay for the tournament when the tournament requests payment. Nobody wants to have to remember that you were too discombobulated to come up with the check you’ve known you needed for the last two months.
23. Do not ask when the next round is. Every time someone asks this question, it postpones the next round by the length of time it takes to listen to the question, curse inwardly, and then explain that we’re working on it.
24. Do not complain that you never get any ballots. In MJP, it is the students who have determined that they don’t want you to judge, not the tab room. To alleviate this situation, learn to judge better, at which point you can proceed to refraining from complaining that you’ve had to judge every round (see 20, above).
25. Feel free to leave cash gratuities in the little jar next to the computer in the tab room.
1. Don’t ask questions because you’re too lazy to look something up. Especially don’t ask questions that would make someone else have to look it up for you.
2. Show up and stay showed up until you’re no longer needed. Then go away.
3. Be the first one to pick up your ballots.
4. Be the first one to get your ballots back to tab.
5. If you have friends in the tab room, they will have had dinner with you the night before. If they didn’t have dinner with you the night before, you do not have friends in the tab room, and you should go hang out somewhere else.
6. Cover all your judging, and if you’re a big school, bring a couple extra. Be a giver, not a taker. If none of your alums are willing to come back to judge, you’re doing something wrong. If none of your upperclassmen will judge underclassmen, you’re doing something really wrong.
7. Do not use foul language with the students you are judging. You may have been brought up in a manure pile, but some of them do not like to find themselves awash in your vulgarities. Also, "You effed up, dude," is not exactly a constructive criticism.
8. Do not expect anyone to read your paradigm past the sentences that say a) that you are fine with speed and b) that you will vote on theory. The rest is just nonsense.
9. If you are asked to text your decision, you might want to text your decision; it’s so much easier than coming up with an excuse for not texting your decision. And if you don’t know how to text, how can you possibly know how to judge?
10. If you do something really stupid, join the club. Admit it, and move on. Just don’t do it again. And again. And again.
11. Do not imbibe alcoholic beverages if there is a possibility that you will have to judge within the next six hours. You’re not that wonderful to begin with. You intoxicated is even less wonderful.
12. Ear buds should be in your pocket, not in your ears, when you are judging.
13. Double thirties in a round, while acting as proof positive that you do not have a clue how to judge, do not give any real indication of how well the debaters did. Don’t do it.
14. The tab room does not have your missing ballots. The tab room does not have anyone’s missing ballots, including its own. We haven't gotten a complete set of all of our ballots in our packets since that one time back in 1997. Why should you be any different?
15. Since it is never all right for you not to fulfill your judging obligation, don’t bother to ask if you really have to come back tomorrow morning. You do.
16. It’s Mutual Judge Preference, not Most Preferred Judging. If your debater got a 4 judge, so did their opponent. That was the best we could do. It’s called an even playing field. If you want more 1s, rank more people as 1s.
17. If you think there’s a ballot error, act quickly. Depending on the error, the further away we are from its occurrence, the harder it is to fix. The tab room does not think it is perfect; far from it. We’ll take accuracy however we can get it.
18. Smoke when you’re not obligated to do anything else, not instead of being where we can find you when we need you. Better yet, quit smoking. With the cost of cigarettes what it is these days, you could be saving enough money to buy a new iPad. Every week.
19. Don’t complain to the tab room that you’re too tired to judge. We’re too tired to tab, and we were here before you arrived today and we’re going to be here after you’re gone tonight, so if you’ve ever wondered what the expression “falling on deaf ears” is all about, this is it.
20. Don’t complain to tab that you’ve had to judge every round. Your debaters have had to debate every round, haven’t they? You haven’t heard them complaining. Not to mention that we’ve had to tab every round. Besides, what else are you going to do in a high school on a Saturday afternoon? This isn’t Disneyland, you know.
21. Ascertain beyond all doubt who you have with you on the team and judging when you arrive at registration, and even more important, relay that information to the proper authorities. Why else do you think we’re asking you to check over your registration?
22. Pay for the tournament when the tournament requests payment. Nobody wants to have to remember that you were too discombobulated to come up with the check you’ve known you needed for the last two months.
23. Do not ask when the next round is. Every time someone asks this question, it postpones the next round by the length of time it takes to listen to the question, curse inwardly, and then explain that we’re working on it.
24. Do not complain that you never get any ballots. In MJP, it is the students who have determined that they don’t want you to judge, not the tab room. To alleviate this situation, learn to judge better, at which point you can proceed to refraining from complaining that you’ve had to judge every round (see 20, above).
25. Feel free to leave cash gratuities in the little jar next to the computer in the tab room.
Monday, December 03, 2012
Debate: After the Tiggers
What is interesting is that, with the passage of time, while some things remain constant, enough others do not that the whole rigmarole continues to be novel.
I’ve been going to the Tiggers since the 90s. In the beginning, it was as a judge with the team, and of course lately in tab. There was a period in the middle when I didn’t go because of issues with the way the tournament was run. The Tigs really thought they knew all about LD, but they didn’t, and their judging was terrible, and although I liked their schedule of 2 up and 2 off, that wasn’t reason enough to go. Hence the MHL on that weekend got built up. You wouldn’t want me to have a weekend off, would you?
Under CP’s tutelage, the tournament got good, and now I’ve followed his lead on the last two as a guiding spirit, and I enjoy it quite a bit. The constants are the various times the traveling tab room gets together for coffee or dinner or whatever, the trip back and forth and JV handling the hotel, the general expectation of reasonable weather (although last year it was bitter cold, which we kept remarking on this year when it wasn’t). There are some other constants as well, with the usual suspects. Every tournament has its own unique USes, that is, the people that you only see there and maybe one or two other places. Looking out over the crowd at the Tigs from the podium, it’s virtually the same year after year. We could have teleported from 2011, or 2008. Same people. Same foibles. We’ve come to expect them. Some of them are irritating, some of them are endearing. It’s part of what makes the Tiggers the Tiggers.
This year though, while the tournament ran swimmingly, with my slow learning of the new features of tabroom and so forth apparently beginning to bear fruit (I only cursed CP a handful of times, and on his side, likewise I’m sure), it had some rather original moments. Everyone, it seemed, was in fine form when it came to filing complaints. I cannot remember a tournament where more people came to us with issues of one sort of another, issues that had nothing to do with the tournament itself or the Tigs, but just…stuff. Registration had barely opened when the first person came to me to informally gripe about something. I replied that I could only pursue formal gripes. Later the informality fell away and the formal attire was put onto this gripe, and I handled it. That’s the first thing, if you’re of the griping persuasion. If you just want to whine about something, you might as well talk to the wall, because you’re going to get exactly the same response as you will from me. But if you want to formally complain, especially about another team, that’s a big deal, because I will do what has to be done. Sometimes that’s not what you want, but it’s what has been deemed right. And in those situations, it’s not me that deems, it’s the tournament as a whole. If an unusual issue arises beyond the scope of what we’re used to in tab, it will be discussed with the hosts. I am not the autocrat of the debate world, even if occasionally I act that way. Keep in mind that I live in the same debate world as, for instance, JV. How many autocrats can there be in that small universe?
So there were a number of formal complaints over the weekend. And here’s the thing. They were handled well by the people bringing them to us. That’s really important. There was one problem where a round didn’t happen, for reasons that were, after all was said and done, extremely unclear, although each side certainly thought that they were as clear as day. The coaches in this situation came to tab with cool tempers, and we talked to a few people, and we figured out a way to hold a makeup round. Everyone left the room happy. We like that. We do want schools who make the effort to go to a tournament and pay all that money, to have a good tournament. Even when a kid does something royally dumb, they shouldn’t have to suffer too too much for it. Just a little. We do want people to have rounds. Why wouldn’t we? We’ll do what we can to make them happen.
There was an unfortunate incident that I don’t want to discuss in specifics, revolving around student behavior. Here’s the deal on that. I feel very strongly, and I know we’ve discussed this on TVFT and that the rest of us in the traveling tab room feel likewise, that modes of behavior during competition must be kept to the highest standards. Part of the forensics experience is that adolescents are maturing rapidly, and forensics focuses that maturation in a good way, with all the travel and so forth. It doesn’t always take, though. At some point, idiots are idiots. Idiots who cause harm, however, should not be exempt from paying the price of that harm, even if the idiots are teenagers. If a situation perceived as harmful arises at a tournament, any tournament, talk to your coach. Come to me, or have your coach come to me. I will find someone to help. I promise.
On another note entirely, and obviously much less sympathetic, I reamed out three judges who, for reasons that defy my understanding, felt that we should all hang around an extra forty-five minutes on Saturday night while they did whatever it was they were doing that wasn’t texting their results to us in a timely manner. If you were one of those three, find some comfort in that I was an equal opportunity reamer, although by the time I got to the third one I simply told him to consider himself reamed out, as I was tired of reaming by this point. So, another thing to keep in mind. The tab staff leaves the tournament about a half hour after the last ballot is handed in. If the members of that staff have a team with them, likewise the team leaves a half hour after that last ballot. We are the last to get home, and the last to get to sleep. We are waiting, impatiently, for you. You do not want to be one of the people we have to wait for, because we have it within our power to assign you to 0-5 rounds for the rest of your debate career. And we will. Trust me on that.
I’ve been going to the Tiggers since the 90s. In the beginning, it was as a judge with the team, and of course lately in tab. There was a period in the middle when I didn’t go because of issues with the way the tournament was run. The Tigs really thought they knew all about LD, but they didn’t, and their judging was terrible, and although I liked their schedule of 2 up and 2 off, that wasn’t reason enough to go. Hence the MHL on that weekend got built up. You wouldn’t want me to have a weekend off, would you?
Under CP’s tutelage, the tournament got good, and now I’ve followed his lead on the last two as a guiding spirit, and I enjoy it quite a bit. The constants are the various times the traveling tab room gets together for coffee or dinner or whatever, the trip back and forth and JV handling the hotel, the general expectation of reasonable weather (although last year it was bitter cold, which we kept remarking on this year when it wasn’t). There are some other constants as well, with the usual suspects. Every tournament has its own unique USes, that is, the people that you only see there and maybe one or two other places. Looking out over the crowd at the Tigs from the podium, it’s virtually the same year after year. We could have teleported from 2011, or 2008. Same people. Same foibles. We’ve come to expect them. Some of them are irritating, some of them are endearing. It’s part of what makes the Tiggers the Tiggers.
This year though, while the tournament ran swimmingly, with my slow learning of the new features of tabroom and so forth apparently beginning to bear fruit (I only cursed CP a handful of times, and on his side, likewise I’m sure), it had some rather original moments. Everyone, it seemed, was in fine form when it came to filing complaints. I cannot remember a tournament where more people came to us with issues of one sort of another, issues that had nothing to do with the tournament itself or the Tigs, but just…stuff. Registration had barely opened when the first person came to me to informally gripe about something. I replied that I could only pursue formal gripes. Later the informality fell away and the formal attire was put onto this gripe, and I handled it. That’s the first thing, if you’re of the griping persuasion. If you just want to whine about something, you might as well talk to the wall, because you’re going to get exactly the same response as you will from me. But if you want to formally complain, especially about another team, that’s a big deal, because I will do what has to be done. Sometimes that’s not what you want, but it’s what has been deemed right. And in those situations, it’s not me that deems, it’s the tournament as a whole. If an unusual issue arises beyond the scope of what we’re used to in tab, it will be discussed with the hosts. I am not the autocrat of the debate world, even if occasionally I act that way. Keep in mind that I live in the same debate world as, for instance, JV. How many autocrats can there be in that small universe?
So there were a number of formal complaints over the weekend. And here’s the thing. They were handled well by the people bringing them to us. That’s really important. There was one problem where a round didn’t happen, for reasons that were, after all was said and done, extremely unclear, although each side certainly thought that they were as clear as day. The coaches in this situation came to tab with cool tempers, and we talked to a few people, and we figured out a way to hold a makeup round. Everyone left the room happy. We like that. We do want schools who make the effort to go to a tournament and pay all that money, to have a good tournament. Even when a kid does something royally dumb, they shouldn’t have to suffer too too much for it. Just a little. We do want people to have rounds. Why wouldn’t we? We’ll do what we can to make them happen.
There was an unfortunate incident that I don’t want to discuss in specifics, revolving around student behavior. Here’s the deal on that. I feel very strongly, and I know we’ve discussed this on TVFT and that the rest of us in the traveling tab room feel likewise, that modes of behavior during competition must be kept to the highest standards. Part of the forensics experience is that adolescents are maturing rapidly, and forensics focuses that maturation in a good way, with all the travel and so forth. It doesn’t always take, though. At some point, idiots are idiots. Idiots who cause harm, however, should not be exempt from paying the price of that harm, even if the idiots are teenagers. If a situation perceived as harmful arises at a tournament, any tournament, talk to your coach. Come to me, or have your coach come to me. I will find someone to help. I promise.
On another note entirely, and obviously much less sympathetic, I reamed out three judges who, for reasons that defy my understanding, felt that we should all hang around an extra forty-five minutes on Saturday night while they did whatever it was they were doing that wasn’t texting their results to us in a timely manner. If you were one of those three, find some comfort in that I was an equal opportunity reamer, although by the time I got to the third one I simply told him to consider himself reamed out, as I was tired of reaming by this point. So, another thing to keep in mind. The tab staff leaves the tournament about a half hour after the last ballot is handed in. If the members of that staff have a team with them, likewise the team leaves a half hour after that last ballot. We are the last to get home, and the last to get to sleep. We are waiting, impatiently, for you. You do not want to be one of the people we have to wait for, because we have it within our power to assign you to 0-5 rounds for the rest of your debate career. And we will. Trust me on that.
Music: Don't try this at home
The problem with YouTube is all those other videos on the right. The curious thing is that this string started with a bad Hawaiian song.
I forgive this one the lack of video in light of the abundance of meat.
I like to thing that these folks will look back one day and shake their heads in wonderment at their crazy youth.
But my favorite is the Twinnies, who lip-synch and accordion-synch, on skates.
I forgive this one the lack of video in light of the abundance of meat.
I like to thing that these folks will look back one day and shake their heads in wonderment at their crazy youth.
But my favorite is the Twinnies, who lip-synch and accordion-synch, on skates.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Debate: Ready to Tigger 'em up
I love dealing with CP. Somehow with him it’s always my fault when I screw something up. I prefer to blame everyone else. Given that there’s only one of me and quite a few of everybody else, the likelihood that one of them is at fault versus me being at fault are about seven billion to one. Those are good odds. What can’t CP accept them?
I think Princeton is ready to roll, in any case. We threw in the strikes for PF late. I had thought about these off and on, but more off more often and hence they fell through the cracks. PF strikes are a slippery product. There’s a certain sanctity of any damned fool can judge it, versus the problem that some damned fools always drop you and I’d rather have some other damned fool judge me if it's all the same to you. It’s curious to look at PF from the other side, as in, newcomer parents who I try to toss in there from the Sailors. Everyone seems to want to spend the next three or four years observing. I mean, once, okay, but after that, you’re in. Watch one, do one, teach one. Watch fifty, do one, attend child’s graduation isn’t really how it’s done. This despite how much we insist that PF is intended for their lay adjudicating ears. I’m seeing the same thing with our Speecho-American parents. How many times do you have to observe Dec before you feel competent enough to judge it? (That, of course, is a trick question. Just watching one round of Dec will turn the most profoundly competent adult into a simmering bowl of hyena sweat incapable of ever rustling up another cogent thought.)
At this point the tournament is about to pounce from the gate. Tonight I’ll look at the data and start setting things up in TRPC. Judge prefs close at 9, so everything is ready at that point, aside from the usual memo from You Know Who asking for more time. Or, maybe you don’t know who, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m still getting people asking about the waitlist, which is sort of moot at this point. I overbooked a little as it is, with the aid of a couple of extra rooms that turned up unexpectedly that I hope are still there once the festivities begin. Also, of course, there is the integrity of the tournament. Some schools could fill up an entire division all by themselves, but that does nothing for everyone else. We’ve got the right numbers for the debate divisions, we’ve had them for a while, and we’re going to keep them. I wouldn’t give my own mother another LDer, but then again, she would know better than to ask.
We did move registration time up a bit on the speech side. I’m wrangling the debate side of things, and JV is wrangling the speech side, and he reminded me that when he figures he’ll be done as soon as registration is closed, the next thing that happens is that tabroom crashes and it turns out that all the numbers are not divisible by any reasonable number for assignments and the judges are all taking the day off to work on their macramé projects. He wants to get out at a reasonable time, as do we debate tabbers, and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t. Needless to say, he runs with full autonomy on his side. I really know nothing about tabbing speech.
Then again, CP would claim that I also really don’t know much about tabbing debate. That’s where we disagree. It’s those other seven billion people who don't know much about tabbing debate. Next to them, I'm Mr. Tab incarnate.
I think Princeton is ready to roll, in any case. We threw in the strikes for PF late. I had thought about these off and on, but more off more often and hence they fell through the cracks. PF strikes are a slippery product. There’s a certain sanctity of any damned fool can judge it, versus the problem that some damned fools always drop you and I’d rather have some other damned fool judge me if it's all the same to you. It’s curious to look at PF from the other side, as in, newcomer parents who I try to toss in there from the Sailors. Everyone seems to want to spend the next three or four years observing. I mean, once, okay, but after that, you’re in. Watch one, do one, teach one. Watch fifty, do one, attend child’s graduation isn’t really how it’s done. This despite how much we insist that PF is intended for their lay adjudicating ears. I’m seeing the same thing with our Speecho-American parents. How many times do you have to observe Dec before you feel competent enough to judge it? (That, of course, is a trick question. Just watching one round of Dec will turn the most profoundly competent adult into a simmering bowl of hyena sweat incapable of ever rustling up another cogent thought.)
At this point the tournament is about to pounce from the gate. Tonight I’ll look at the data and start setting things up in TRPC. Judge prefs close at 9, so everything is ready at that point, aside from the usual memo from You Know Who asking for more time. Or, maybe you don’t know who, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m still getting people asking about the waitlist, which is sort of moot at this point. I overbooked a little as it is, with the aid of a couple of extra rooms that turned up unexpectedly that I hope are still there once the festivities begin. Also, of course, there is the integrity of the tournament. Some schools could fill up an entire division all by themselves, but that does nothing for everyone else. We’ve got the right numbers for the debate divisions, we’ve had them for a while, and we’re going to keep them. I wouldn’t give my own mother another LDer, but then again, she would know better than to ask.
We did move registration time up a bit on the speech side. I’m wrangling the debate side of things, and JV is wrangling the speech side, and he reminded me that when he figures he’ll be done as soon as registration is closed, the next thing that happens is that tabroom crashes and it turns out that all the numbers are not divisible by any reasonable number for assignments and the judges are all taking the day off to work on their macramé projects. He wants to get out at a reasonable time, as do we debate tabbers, and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t. Needless to say, he runs with full autonomy on his side. I really know nothing about tabbing speech.
Then again, CP would claim that I also really don’t know much about tabbing debate. That’s where we disagree. It’s those other seven billion people who don't know much about tabbing debate. Next to them, I'm Mr. Tab incarnate.
Music: The greatest players of the guitar and ukulele?
There's something magical about people really making music...
More articles we didn't finish reading
These headlines are all real, directly copied from our RSS feed without editing. When we say we didn't read them, we mean it. They didn't exactly pull us in, for some reason...
- Between Facebook and Sex, Facebook Wins
- You Can Now Buy Soil from Justin Bieber's Hometown
- Kardashian Christmas card: Learn the Photoshop secrets
- Yoko Ono's Fashions for Men
- Mailing Service Lets Customers Send Stinky Farts By Mail
- Smell Delicious With Bacon Shaving Cream
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Debate: Running things, sort of
In a way it’s rather odd helping out at the Tigger tournament. Obviously I run the tournament at my own high school, which for me means getting as many other people aside from myself to do the work as is humanly possible. Come to think of it, getting out of doing work has been my modus operandi for as long as I can remember. In the DJ it meant inventing all sorts of technical systems that got everybody else out of doing a lot of work too, one of those high tides lifting all boats sort of things. I’m pretty good at systems overall, and I was able back in the day to apply that talent not only to classic bureaucratic bloat but to some burgeoning technologies; putting the two together got everything exactly the way I liked it, and still like it. It reminds me of The Doubleday Cookbook. When I was working at that particular publisher in my youth, they were putting together this classic magnum opus, one of those enormous how-to-cook-everything books. For reasons I don’t quite recall, I was assigned to do the index, something I had never done before or since. I took to it with a vengeance. The end result, lo these many years later, is that whenever I look something up in the index of The Doubleday Cookbook, I always find what I am looking for at the very first try, exactly where I intuitively expect to find it. If you can’t organize the world the way you like it, then at least try to organize the index.
Anyhow, the real point is that I enjoy running things. My daughter calls this going into God mode. I’m good at delegating what can be delegated, and doing myself what can’t be delegated, and knowing the difference. Of course, I really don’t run the Tiggers or the Gem of Harlem so much as guide them along where needed, as needed. It’s different for every school. The Tigs are terrifically well organized (perhaps as a result of their years with CP, but then again, when I got into the Gem, they were terrifically not well organized after the same number of years with CP, so go figure) and all you have to do is point them in the right direction. We put O’C as their guardian on trophies and judge acquisition, for instance. Having O’C as your guide to awards is like having Lance Armstrong as your guide to biking: he does it on steroids. But universities need university trophies, and O'C got the Tigs over the hump of their Dollar Store awards into the real thing. I mean, let’s face it. While a university tournament may offer good competition, most people go because it’s that particular university. There’s an underlying reason why so many Ivies do high school events with people breaking down the doors to get in. They don’t even really need the allure of bids: people just want to walk those hallowed paths and imagine themselves being here in a few years as actual Tiggers (or whatever) themselves. I think it was Bietz’s proposal that all universities automatically get semis bids, somewhat based on this premise.
So we point the students at a school in the right direction, and do some of the stuff ourselves. For me, it’s always running the registration, which I love doing. I love pulling people off the waitlists (it always makes you look like some great hero), matching up judge hires, rapping recalcitrant knuckles as needed, wondering if this year yet against XY HS’s coach will blow off her judging obligations (which is why her school was taken off the waitlist so late) and if YX HS’s parents will pull out all their losers on Saturday night despite the hundreds of dollars of fines imposed on them last year. Have I ever mentioned I have a pretty good memory for tournament shenanigans? Combine that with the number of registrations I run, it’s not a good idea for your school to join in the shenaniganning, if you know what I mean. In any case, running a big registration means picking at tabroom every couple of hours, especially as we get close to finalizing fees. I get a kick out of that. Other people no doubt would find it torture of the worst order.
What will be interesting this time out is using tabroom again for notifications. I have to admit that I have no confidence in my understanding of this from the users point of view, which means that a) I haven’t read the directions in tabroom and b) when people ask me questions I’ll have to make something up. It worked pretty well at Bronx, insofar as notifying people that something was happening, but it didn’t necessarily notify them of the correct thing that was happening. CP, happily unraveling a parli tournament at the Pups that weekend, occasionally texted responses to my cries of help to the tune of, “Oh, that’s not good,” and, “Um, I should look at the data.” I’m not sure where he is this weekend, but I can imagine getting texts from some random gin mill on the south side of Boston telling me that “Oh, that doesn’t sound good.” We’ll see.
The point of all of this is that I do like working other people’s tournaments. Sometimes it’s just sitting in tab keeping the machine humming and pulling out the sausages. Other times it’s getting out front and pushing the random animal parts into the sausage-making machine in the first place. The Tiggers is a Random Animal Parts tournament for me. Which, as I say, I really enjoy.
(I hope that the linguistic abuses in this post don'tt mean I’ll have to turn in my Metaphor License any time soon.)
Anyhow, the real point is that I enjoy running things. My daughter calls this going into God mode. I’m good at delegating what can be delegated, and doing myself what can’t be delegated, and knowing the difference. Of course, I really don’t run the Tiggers or the Gem of Harlem so much as guide them along where needed, as needed. It’s different for every school. The Tigs are terrifically well organized (perhaps as a result of their years with CP, but then again, when I got into the Gem, they were terrifically not well organized after the same number of years with CP, so go figure) and all you have to do is point them in the right direction. We put O’C as their guardian on trophies and judge acquisition, for instance. Having O’C as your guide to awards is like having Lance Armstrong as your guide to biking: he does it on steroids. But universities need university trophies, and O'C got the Tigs over the hump of their Dollar Store awards into the real thing. I mean, let’s face it. While a university tournament may offer good competition, most people go because it’s that particular university. There’s an underlying reason why so many Ivies do high school events with people breaking down the doors to get in. They don’t even really need the allure of bids: people just want to walk those hallowed paths and imagine themselves being here in a few years as actual Tiggers (or whatever) themselves. I think it was Bietz’s proposal that all universities automatically get semis bids, somewhat based on this premise.
So we point the students at a school in the right direction, and do some of the stuff ourselves. For me, it’s always running the registration, which I love doing. I love pulling people off the waitlists (it always makes you look like some great hero), matching up judge hires, rapping recalcitrant knuckles as needed, wondering if this year yet against XY HS’s coach will blow off her judging obligations (which is why her school was taken off the waitlist so late) and if YX HS’s parents will pull out all their losers on Saturday night despite the hundreds of dollars of fines imposed on them last year. Have I ever mentioned I have a pretty good memory for tournament shenanigans? Combine that with the number of registrations I run, it’s not a good idea for your school to join in the shenaniganning, if you know what I mean. In any case, running a big registration means picking at tabroom every couple of hours, especially as we get close to finalizing fees. I get a kick out of that. Other people no doubt would find it torture of the worst order.
What will be interesting this time out is using tabroom again for notifications. I have to admit that I have no confidence in my understanding of this from the users point of view, which means that a) I haven’t read the directions in tabroom and b) when people ask me questions I’ll have to make something up. It worked pretty well at Bronx, insofar as notifying people that something was happening, but it didn’t necessarily notify them of the correct thing that was happening. CP, happily unraveling a parli tournament at the Pups that weekend, occasionally texted responses to my cries of help to the tune of, “Oh, that’s not good,” and, “Um, I should look at the data.” I’m not sure where he is this weekend, but I can imagine getting texts from some random gin mill on the south side of Boston telling me that “Oh, that doesn’t sound good.” We’ll see.
The point of all of this is that I do like working other people’s tournaments. Sometimes it’s just sitting in tab keeping the machine humming and pulling out the sausages. Other times it’s getting out front and pushing the random animal parts into the sausage-making machine in the first place. The Tiggers is a Random Animal Parts tournament for me. Which, as I say, I really enjoy.
(I hope that the linguistic abuses in this post don'tt mean I’ll have to turn in my Metaphor License any time soon.)
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Debate: More on Academy
I've cross-posted this to the Northeast-Forensics group on Google. Please respond there, if you're so inclined.
It would seem that there are a couple of immediate responses to Academy Debate.
First, there’s a misperception that it offers some change of the present debate activities. It was suggested that it would be a new debate activity altogether, or should somehow work as a preventative against certain practices that some coaches find displeasing. This is not the intention. Academy, as it relates to actual debating, should be seen an no different than the connotation of novice or varsity or junior varsity as they relate to their particular brand of debate. Academy is rigidly defined as aimed at sophomores and juniors and excluding seniors; it can also be judged by seniors (and, of course, the usual college judges and coaches). In other words, we limit who can do it, and expand who can judge it, but we do not attempt to interfere with the content, nor make claims for any new content of debate. As I’ve said, in that regard it is something like an expanded junior varsity division. Why not just call it JV? Well, around here JV has a very specific connotation. Aside from Yale, the first tournament of the year for most participants, it only exists in local events, where it comprises mostly sophomores and upwards looking freshman, and is primarily a division that provides randomly paired rounds and access to state finals at the end of the year. In other words, there are no “real” tournaments aside from Yale that offer it, and there it’s only in LD. For the most part, aside from the local occasional one-day events (which I value highly, don’t get me wrong), debaters in LD and Policy are either novices or varsity, and for the most part they’re all varsity in PF. So on the one hand, the idea of Academy Debate is predicated on finding meaningful rounds for intermediate debaters, who both get their heads handed to them at varsity events (a little learning from losing goes a long way) and often learn to dislike the activity (at least LD) because the commitment at the highest levels is so intense, and they’re always facing competition at those highest levels (until they’re bracketed down into the bottom).
So on the one hand, there’s the benefits to a specific group of debaters of a division dedicated to them. Secondly, there’s the benefits to tournaments. Academy is not intended to be some new structure for some new tournaments. Speaking frankly, there are some tournaments that are in trouble, or will be in trouble, and Academy might be the help they’re looking for.
We need to look at the tournament situation in the region. The season begins at Yale, and then for all practical purposes there are no weekends off, aside from holidays, until April. This is not an exaggeration. Some of these are big invitationals, some are local one-dayers, but they take up the entire calendar. Every now and then some program comes along and wants to hold a tournament, and we always tell them the same thing: Fine, but there’s nowhere to put it.
So our calendar is full, and what happens is, the season begins to take shape as a result of what tournaments are when, and teams adjust accordingly. It seems that there’s about one big TOC-qual tournament every month, and there’s a lot of jockeying around them. They anchor a team’s calendar at the varsity end. Then there’s the regular one-dayers, in NY being the MHL and the NYCFL. There’s also about one of these a month, and they anchor the team’s calendar at the other, younger end. And then there’s the tournaments with no bids, and maybe no plans at trying to get bids. The bid-seeking varsity debaters aren’t very interested in these, for the most part, not only because of the lack of bids but because the competition won’t be at their level. Monticello is the perfect example of this, in all its divisions. It comes between Yale and Big Bronx, and used to have bids, but lost them over the years because it really is a regional tournament that doesn’t go out and buy a lot of circuit judges or anything like that. I find it a very welcoming venue, with great amenities for judges and coaches, plus it offers housing to the students. It’s also big enough to hold the winter Olympics in there (and, in Monticello, it is always winter). But after it lost its bids, programs seemed to lose interest in it. What programs didn’t do, I would imagine, was lose interest in developing their sophomores and juniors, many of whom might not debate at the bracketing tournaments of Yale and Bronx because of entry limits. But since Monti had no lure for the top varsity, but divisions that were called varsity (or open) that had to be judged by paid adjudicators, it became much less attractive. It was one thing to get some rounds for lightly seasoned debaters when you also had the chance to pick up a bid, and another thing altogether to get some rounds for lightly seasoned debaters between the expensive Yale and Bronx events, at the same cost.
Over the last couple of years attendance has declined steadily at Monticello, and the tournament runs the risk of disappearing, yet it is a venue that has proven it can hold a tournament of great size successfully (no easy feat year after year). If it were to disappear, I would bet dollars to doughnuts that someone else would grab the weekend, but the same issues would ensue, regardless of who grabbed it under what aegis. The bracketing tournaments determine that this one will always be what it is (unless Yale and Bronx somehow lose their bids). So we are faced with the situation of lightly seasoned debaters losing an opportunity for rounds on this weekend (and there are a couple of other weekends like this throughout the year, but let’s stick to one example for now). We can let the weekend expire, or we can try to revitalize it.
The other half of Academy Debate, and the reason for its name, is that tournaments offering this division will also offer training/workshops/lectures/brainstorms—whatever makes sense to provide not just much-needed rounds to a particularly underserved audience, but also desirable educational enhancement. Not every team has the coaching resources to do a lot of this, even if they’re piloted by strong educators. But if we find an open slot or two at a given tournament, and allow students at that tournament to brainstorm the next topic, or hear a lecture on social contract, or whatever, it becomes an even more desirable event to add to a team’s calendar. We not only get tournaments on the calendar specifically geared to the most experienced and the least experienced, but also for those in the middle.
It may be a lagniappe of having seniors judge that certain seniors with strong credentials might also participate in training. Rising varsity might especially appreciate a half hour discussion of, say, theory, from a bidded-up LDer known for running theory. Or a crack PF team who explain how they, personally, prep for a topic. There are plenty of opportunities like this, that would appeal both to the seniors showing off their skills and to their potential audiences.
Obviously the nature of the academic events offered at an AD tournament would vary according to the personnel at the tournament. And some tournaments might offer in only one division, because their other divisions are TOC level. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. And most tournaments wouldn't offer it all, because they're serving a different audience.
The plan is to test this idea at the Byram Hills tournament in January. The situation there is a tournament right after the break, the week before Big Lex, conflicting on the national level with the Sunvitational. This is a young tournament that has never drawn a strong varsity field, and it never will. But the intermediate students who will get crushed next week at Big Lex might really benefit if Byram were an Academy Debate tournament, with rounds at their level and enhancements for their long-term careers. And that’s what we’re going to try to do.
It would seem that there are a couple of immediate responses to Academy Debate.
First, there’s a misperception that it offers some change of the present debate activities. It was suggested that it would be a new debate activity altogether, or should somehow work as a preventative against certain practices that some coaches find displeasing. This is not the intention. Academy, as it relates to actual debating, should be seen an no different than the connotation of novice or varsity or junior varsity as they relate to their particular brand of debate. Academy is rigidly defined as aimed at sophomores and juniors and excluding seniors; it can also be judged by seniors (and, of course, the usual college judges and coaches). In other words, we limit who can do it, and expand who can judge it, but we do not attempt to interfere with the content, nor make claims for any new content of debate. As I’ve said, in that regard it is something like an expanded junior varsity division. Why not just call it JV? Well, around here JV has a very specific connotation. Aside from Yale, the first tournament of the year for most participants, it only exists in local events, where it comprises mostly sophomores and upwards looking freshman, and is primarily a division that provides randomly paired rounds and access to state finals at the end of the year. In other words, there are no “real” tournaments aside from Yale that offer it, and there it’s only in LD. For the most part, aside from the local occasional one-day events (which I value highly, don’t get me wrong), debaters in LD and Policy are either novices or varsity, and for the most part they’re all varsity in PF. So on the one hand, the idea of Academy Debate is predicated on finding meaningful rounds for intermediate debaters, who both get their heads handed to them at varsity events (a little learning from losing goes a long way) and often learn to dislike the activity (at least LD) because the commitment at the highest levels is so intense, and they’re always facing competition at those highest levels (until they’re bracketed down into the bottom).
So on the one hand, there’s the benefits to a specific group of debaters of a division dedicated to them. Secondly, there’s the benefits to tournaments. Academy is not intended to be some new structure for some new tournaments. Speaking frankly, there are some tournaments that are in trouble, or will be in trouble, and Academy might be the help they’re looking for.
We need to look at the tournament situation in the region. The season begins at Yale, and then for all practical purposes there are no weekends off, aside from holidays, until April. This is not an exaggeration. Some of these are big invitationals, some are local one-dayers, but they take up the entire calendar. Every now and then some program comes along and wants to hold a tournament, and we always tell them the same thing: Fine, but there’s nowhere to put it.
So our calendar is full, and what happens is, the season begins to take shape as a result of what tournaments are when, and teams adjust accordingly. It seems that there’s about one big TOC-qual tournament every month, and there’s a lot of jockeying around them. They anchor a team’s calendar at the varsity end. Then there’s the regular one-dayers, in NY being the MHL and the NYCFL. There’s also about one of these a month, and they anchor the team’s calendar at the other, younger end. And then there’s the tournaments with no bids, and maybe no plans at trying to get bids. The bid-seeking varsity debaters aren’t very interested in these, for the most part, not only because of the lack of bids but because the competition won’t be at their level. Monticello is the perfect example of this, in all its divisions. It comes between Yale and Big Bronx, and used to have bids, but lost them over the years because it really is a regional tournament that doesn’t go out and buy a lot of circuit judges or anything like that. I find it a very welcoming venue, with great amenities for judges and coaches, plus it offers housing to the students. It’s also big enough to hold the winter Olympics in there (and, in Monticello, it is always winter). But after it lost its bids, programs seemed to lose interest in it. What programs didn’t do, I would imagine, was lose interest in developing their sophomores and juniors, many of whom might not debate at the bracketing tournaments of Yale and Bronx because of entry limits. But since Monti had no lure for the top varsity, but divisions that were called varsity (or open) that had to be judged by paid adjudicators, it became much less attractive. It was one thing to get some rounds for lightly seasoned debaters when you also had the chance to pick up a bid, and another thing altogether to get some rounds for lightly seasoned debaters between the expensive Yale and Bronx events, at the same cost.
Over the last couple of years attendance has declined steadily at Monticello, and the tournament runs the risk of disappearing, yet it is a venue that has proven it can hold a tournament of great size successfully (no easy feat year after year). If it were to disappear, I would bet dollars to doughnuts that someone else would grab the weekend, but the same issues would ensue, regardless of who grabbed it under what aegis. The bracketing tournaments determine that this one will always be what it is (unless Yale and Bronx somehow lose their bids). So we are faced with the situation of lightly seasoned debaters losing an opportunity for rounds on this weekend (and there are a couple of other weekends like this throughout the year, but let’s stick to one example for now). We can let the weekend expire, or we can try to revitalize it.
The other half of Academy Debate, and the reason for its name, is that tournaments offering this division will also offer training/workshops/lectures/brainstorms—whatever makes sense to provide not just much-needed rounds to a particularly underserved audience, but also desirable educational enhancement. Not every team has the coaching resources to do a lot of this, even if they’re piloted by strong educators. But if we find an open slot or two at a given tournament, and allow students at that tournament to brainstorm the next topic, or hear a lecture on social contract, or whatever, it becomes an even more desirable event to add to a team’s calendar. We not only get tournaments on the calendar specifically geared to the most experienced and the least experienced, but also for those in the middle.
It may be a lagniappe of having seniors judge that certain seniors with strong credentials might also participate in training. Rising varsity might especially appreciate a half hour discussion of, say, theory, from a bidded-up LDer known for running theory. Or a crack PF team who explain how they, personally, prep for a topic. There are plenty of opportunities like this, that would appeal both to the seniors showing off their skills and to their potential audiences.
Obviously the nature of the academic events offered at an AD tournament would vary according to the personnel at the tournament. And some tournaments might offer in only one division, because their other divisions are TOC level. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. And most tournaments wouldn't offer it all, because they're serving a different audience.
The plan is to test this idea at the Byram Hills tournament in January. The situation there is a tournament right after the break, the week before Big Lex, conflicting on the national level with the Sunvitational. This is a young tournament that has never drawn a strong varsity field, and it never will. But the intermediate students who will get crushed next week at Big Lex might really benefit if Byram were an Academy Debate tournament, with rounds at their level and enhancements for their long-term careers. And that’s what we’re going to try to do.
Coachean Feed: public speaking, standardized tests, sexism on campus, compulsory voting, software patents
- Fear of public speaking is as common as can be. Having once painfully suffered from it myself, I am a true believer that the best cure is to do it, hence the best way to beat nerves as a debater is to debate more. That's also some of the advice in The neuroscience of stage fright — and how to cope with it. Plus there's other interesting stuff about the problem.
- Why It’s Time to Get Rid of Standardized Tests Hurry up, please, it's time. Except, in one form or another, I've been hearing this all my life. Since I used to be one of those people who, as they said, tested well, and since I knew there was no particular reason for that (brilliant I was, but not all that brilliant), I believe the underlying truth of this. Changing it? Something else altogether. Where's the PF topic on it?
- Sexism on campus? No way, right? Wrong. Is Student Life Becoming More Sexist?
- Our war on drugs is an abject failure. Why doesn't this surprise me?
- On compulsory voting. It could be a topic this year, or some year.
- And then there's software patents:
Monday, November 26, 2012
Debate: How I spent my Thanksgiving vacation
Back to the DJ today after a full week off. It’s amazing how quickly one forgets how to sit around doing mostly nothing.
After Wee Sma’ Lex, we celebrated an early Thanksgiving at the daughter’s, as on the day itself she was off to London to visit the husband. (They’ll be skying back and forth until March when he lands here for the duration.) One of the guests was a relative, the grandson of my father’s Uncle Dom. I have no idea precisely how any of us are related to him aside from being some level of cousin at some level of removal. The funny thing is, he looked just like a Menick. It was like talking to one of my father’s brothers, except he’s half my age. Kate discovered him at her new job. You never know who’s going to turn up! He was full of family lore, including the source of the name which was Germanized in order for the Italians to get what was in our area a German-controlled liquor license. I recommend that every holiday have a surprise relative show up. Makes for interesting conversation.
On the entertainment front, saw Skyfall and Michael Feinstein (separately), and a superior exhibit of the circus in NY at the Barnard Graduate Center on the west side. Read about futurism in architecture. Ate out fewer times than I had expected. Paid little or no attention to blogging. Did some online Christmas shopping but went into no stores. Had another Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving day, this time at the chez. Watched five minutes of the annual Macy's Lip Synching Parade. Actually walked by the balloons being blown up on the previous Wednesday around the Museum of Natural History. They were working on Buzz LY and Spongebob SP when we were there, and the streets were lined with barriers in preparation for the big…preparation. Watching the parade get made up is about as popular as watching the parade happen, and you don’t have to suffer through people you don’t know pretending to sing.
Sorted out Princeton rooms. Complained a few times to CP about things for which he was not responsible. Cleaned up all my mother’s financial papers from the floor of the chez and stacked them in the basement. Discovered the NY Times site with the extra puzzles (including SET). Took a few naps. Chopped a bunch of wood. Started discussing Academy Debate on the northeast forensics listserver. Began preparing questions for the annual Christmas Bean Trivia session with the Sailors.
And, oh yeah, while I was typing this, got distracted and cleared off the last major bloc of Tigger entries.
We're where we should be the Monday after TG.
After Wee Sma’ Lex, we celebrated an early Thanksgiving at the daughter’s, as on the day itself she was off to London to visit the husband. (They’ll be skying back and forth until March when he lands here for the duration.) One of the guests was a relative, the grandson of my father’s Uncle Dom. I have no idea precisely how any of us are related to him aside from being some level of cousin at some level of removal. The funny thing is, he looked just like a Menick. It was like talking to one of my father’s brothers, except he’s half my age. Kate discovered him at her new job. You never know who’s going to turn up! He was full of family lore, including the source of the name which was Germanized in order for the Italians to get what was in our area a German-controlled liquor license. I recommend that every holiday have a surprise relative show up. Makes for interesting conversation.
On the entertainment front, saw Skyfall and Michael Feinstein (separately), and a superior exhibit of the circus in NY at the Barnard Graduate Center on the west side. Read about futurism in architecture. Ate out fewer times than I had expected. Paid little or no attention to blogging. Did some online Christmas shopping but went into no stores. Had another Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving day, this time at the chez. Watched five minutes of the annual Macy's Lip Synching Parade. Actually walked by the balloons being blown up on the previous Wednesday around the Museum of Natural History. They were working on Buzz LY and Spongebob SP when we were there, and the streets were lined with barriers in preparation for the big…preparation. Watching the parade get made up is about as popular as watching the parade happen, and you don’t have to suffer through people you don’t know pretending to sing.
Sorted out Princeton rooms. Complained a few times to CP about things for which he was not responsible. Cleaned up all my mother’s financial papers from the floor of the chez and stacked them in the basement. Discovered the NY Times site with the extra puzzles (including SET). Took a few naps. Chopped a bunch of wood. Started discussing Academy Debate on the northeast forensics listserver. Began preparing questions for the annual Christmas Bean Trivia session with the Sailors.
And, oh yeah, while I was typing this, got distracted and cleared off the last major bloc of Tigger entries.
We're where we should be the Monday after TG.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Debate: Gearing back up
I probably should think about getting back to business. I took the whole week off, and it was sort of full and empty, depending upon the time and the day. I seem to be way off my normal schedule lately, for a variety of reasons, like Sandy and Bump and General Malaise and whatnot. But that can’t go on forever. It’s not as if I haven’t been doing what I have to do, but I haven’t been spending much time on the extras. There are enough hours in the day, if one bothers to use them.
A whole weekend ago we went up to Wee Sma’ Lex. This is always fun for me and for the Sailors. First of all, it’s a breeze after Bump, and one wants a breeze if at all possible. Second, it’s a chance to take my young ‘uns away for their first housing in some cases. Plus it’s a tournament lite, with four rounds, so they get experience without having their heads handed to them. It worked out well, for the most part. My two debuters won some rounds, which is way better than debuting and sinking like the proverbial stone. On the down side, we were expecting an Italian feast and ended up in a Thai restaurant, which was fine, but the Italian food in a Thai restaurant can’t hold a candle to the Italian food in an Italian restaurant. (You’ll just have to trust me on that.) CP tells me that they shut down the Italian place after last year’s Lex RR. Feh! You leave Lexington alone for two minutes and they start shuttering the landmarks. On the positive side, I think it would take Armageddon to shut down Rein’s Deli in Hartford, so we had that on the way home. At times we’ve gone in attempting to set the record for individual consumption of matzo ball soup, but this time we just ate like normal (non-adolescent) people, except for Pickles who, when eating a pickle, managed to acquire a nickname. ‘Nuff said. On another down side, the bus driver was of the persuasion: “You go up here and turn right and then left,” and she would respond, “Turn left and then right.” After a while you wanted to rely on the curvature of the earth to get her there eventually when she headed off 180 degrees somewhere else. On another up side, we got out of Lexington earlier than ever before, and home earlier than ever before. All in all, it was delightful.
At one point CP sat me down and explained that in my parochial fashion I had introduced Academy Debate to New York and New Jersey, but had left out Massachusetts. Duh. So, I created a Northeast regional debate coach listserver. It’s called Northeast Forensics on Google groups if you want to join; it’s open to one and all. I used the Wee Sma’ registration to acquire the names of relevant Massachusetts people. I figure any minute now I’ll put the Academy outline up there for discussion. The thing is, if it’s a good idea, it will appeal to debate teams there too. Curiously, someone responded here that AD should be used as a tool to control the content of debate, i.e., less $ircuity, but that’s not it’s goal at all. It’s there simply to provide of level of debate for younger students who are almost intrinsically non-circuit, i.e., slower and less theoretical and more likely to debate the resolution head-on. While I personally have no love of LD at circuit events these days, if for no other reason than that I simply can’t follow it, I’m not out to sabotage it or create an alternative. I mean, debate will go where it goes, and there are things people can do (and I think that MJP is one of those things) to keep it where you like it, but generally not liking it doesn’t make it bad. It just makes it something you don’t like. There’s a lot of forensic activities out there: no one is forcing anyone to concentrate on LD if they don’t want to.
And I’ve spent a lot of time working on Princeton. We’ve got more rooms this year, which is nice, and I divvied those up according to some internal logic that I couldn’t possibly remember five minutes after I created the files. Something to do with geography and brain power, probably, based on the idea that VLD judges and debaters could probably go the furthest afield while PF judges (maybe more inexperienced and parental) and novice LDers were more likely to get lost before they even walked out the door. I also kept the old eye on the waitlist, which has whittled down nicely. My guess is that there will be a few left standing in VLD, but the rest look fine. C’est la guerre. If you want to debate nowadays at major tournaments, don’t wait three weeks to sign up. It shouldn’t just go to the first-day types, but at some point a little sense of urgency on the part of coaches can’t hurt. The tournament opened 10/15. I’m waiting for someone to use Sandy (10/29) as an excuse. And I have a pretty good idea who it will be, too.
Somewhere in there, we also opened registration for Columbia. There were some glitches during the first hour or so, which CP claims he was valiantly fixing, although I claim he was invaliantly screwing things up in the first place. Speaking of which, I want to use the warm room features of tabroom at Princeton, so I’ve been bugging him to give me a refresher on how to work it. I think it’s looking good. We’ll see.
And that’s that.
A whole weekend ago we went up to Wee Sma’ Lex. This is always fun for me and for the Sailors. First of all, it’s a breeze after Bump, and one wants a breeze if at all possible. Second, it’s a chance to take my young ‘uns away for their first housing in some cases. Plus it’s a tournament lite, with four rounds, so they get experience without having their heads handed to them. It worked out well, for the most part. My two debuters won some rounds, which is way better than debuting and sinking like the proverbial stone. On the down side, we were expecting an Italian feast and ended up in a Thai restaurant, which was fine, but the Italian food in a Thai restaurant can’t hold a candle to the Italian food in an Italian restaurant. (You’ll just have to trust me on that.) CP tells me that they shut down the Italian place after last year’s Lex RR. Feh! You leave Lexington alone for two minutes and they start shuttering the landmarks. On the positive side, I think it would take Armageddon to shut down Rein’s Deli in Hartford, so we had that on the way home. At times we’ve gone in attempting to set the record for individual consumption of matzo ball soup, but this time we just ate like normal (non-adolescent) people, except for Pickles who, when eating a pickle, managed to acquire a nickname. ‘Nuff said. On another down side, the bus driver was of the persuasion: “You go up here and turn right and then left,” and she would respond, “Turn left and then right.” After a while you wanted to rely on the curvature of the earth to get her there eventually when she headed off 180 degrees somewhere else. On another up side, we got out of Lexington earlier than ever before, and home earlier than ever before. All in all, it was delightful.
At one point CP sat me down and explained that in my parochial fashion I had introduced Academy Debate to New York and New Jersey, but had left out Massachusetts. Duh. So, I created a Northeast regional debate coach listserver. It’s called Northeast Forensics on Google groups if you want to join; it’s open to one and all. I used the Wee Sma’ registration to acquire the names of relevant Massachusetts people. I figure any minute now I’ll put the Academy outline up there for discussion. The thing is, if it’s a good idea, it will appeal to debate teams there too. Curiously, someone responded here that AD should be used as a tool to control the content of debate, i.e., less $ircuity, but that’s not it’s goal at all. It’s there simply to provide of level of debate for younger students who are almost intrinsically non-circuit, i.e., slower and less theoretical and more likely to debate the resolution head-on. While I personally have no love of LD at circuit events these days, if for no other reason than that I simply can’t follow it, I’m not out to sabotage it or create an alternative. I mean, debate will go where it goes, and there are things people can do (and I think that MJP is one of those things) to keep it where you like it, but generally not liking it doesn’t make it bad. It just makes it something you don’t like. There’s a lot of forensic activities out there: no one is forcing anyone to concentrate on LD if they don’t want to.
And I’ve spent a lot of time working on Princeton. We’ve got more rooms this year, which is nice, and I divvied those up according to some internal logic that I couldn’t possibly remember five minutes after I created the files. Something to do with geography and brain power, probably, based on the idea that VLD judges and debaters could probably go the furthest afield while PF judges (maybe more inexperienced and parental) and novice LDers were more likely to get lost before they even walked out the door. I also kept the old eye on the waitlist, which has whittled down nicely. My guess is that there will be a few left standing in VLD, but the rest look fine. C’est la guerre. If you want to debate nowadays at major tournaments, don’t wait three weeks to sign up. It shouldn’t just go to the first-day types, but at some point a little sense of urgency on the part of coaches can’t hurt. The tournament opened 10/15. I’m waiting for someone to use Sandy (10/29) as an excuse. And I have a pretty good idea who it will be, too.
Somewhere in there, we also opened registration for Columbia. There were some glitches during the first hour or so, which CP claims he was valiantly fixing, although I claim he was invaliantly screwing things up in the first place. Speaking of which, I want to use the warm room features of tabroom at Princeton, so I’ve been bugging him to give me a refresher on how to work it. I think it’s looking good. We’ll see.
And that’s that.
Friday, November 16, 2012
Riding off into the weekend: Premies
There are those among us who, when they think of classic Coney Island rides, think of parachute jumps or wonder wheels or cyclones. But these pale in comparison to my personal favorite: the incubators! With live babies! State of the art natal care for the prematurely arrived!
What?
I actually am a connoisseur of classic Luna Park and Dreamland. And one of the biggest attractions back in the day? The title of the piece says it all: Babies in incubators were once an attraction at Coney Island
If only there was a way to add something like this to #DisAd13.
What?
I actually am a connoisseur of classic Luna Park and Dreamland. And one of the biggest attractions back in the day? The title of the piece says it all: Babies in incubators were once an attraction at Coney Island
If only there was a way to add something like this to #DisAd13.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Academy Debate
I have proposed this to the NYSDCA and gotten a good response, and we plan to try to inaugurate the idea at Byram Hills in January. Slightly edited, here is my original memo:
We need a division of debate that recognizes that while every student can benefit from forensics, not every student wishes to make it their life’s work. Additionally, we need to provide a better link from beginner to varsity, regardless of a student’s commitment to the activity. And finally, we need to insure that all our regional tournaments provide the community with appropriate levels of competition and engagement, so that our rich competitive calendar continues to thrive.
I offer the solution tentatively titled Academy Debate.
Academy Debate is, primarily, a level of competition that can be applied to any division of policy, LD or PF. Academy Debate is primarily intended for sophomores and juniors, and is open to anyone except seniors and students past their third year of debate (i.e., juniors who debated in middle school now in their fourth year would not be eligible to participate at the Academy Debate level).
Additionally, Academy Debate can be judged by seniors in their fourth year of debate. In fact, seniors in their fourth year are urged to judge, and will be considered not only judges but instructors, especially at tournaments that embrace the full Academy Debate designation.
We have a number of students at the senior level who have a lot to give to the community beyond their ability to adjudicate rounds less expensively than college students (although one reason for creating the Academy level is to remove the need to hire judges for local tournaments). This proposal intends to use those other skills of our upperclassmen. The idea is that if a tournament wishes to adopt an Academy Debate structure, the regional community will work with the tournament to develop a program beyond the rounds that will be interwoven into the tournament. Beyond-the-Rounds activities will include lectures and brainstorms on new resolutions, demo rounds by TOC-level seniors with commentary, stop rounds (coaches judging a round can break in at any time with advice and questions), background lectures by coaches and student instructors (e.g., a unit on sovereignty or due process or whatever). The hope is to slot maybe two or three of these special events into a tournament, during down time and even in lieu of a round.
Our belief is that this will invigorate tournaments that do not have TOC bids by making them appealing to younger students, who can come and actually learn something, and to older students, who can come and, quite frankly, show off their skills.
Any tournaments in the region could find material that would be of great interest in the Academy Debate model, depending on the time of year. There are always new resolutions to explore and new techniques to learn. For instance, look at January in the northeast. On Martin Luther King weekend we have Big Lex, a triple-threat TOC-level tournament with heavy competition in each division. Additionally, for most LDers this is the first TOC-level shot at the Jan-Feb resolution that will also be the TOC resolution and, probably, the NYSDCA resolution. In our present system:
• Seniors and TOC hopefuls are working hard on their cases, and have little interest in “prepping for Lex” at a tournament with competition not at their own level.
• Younger students are preparing to have their heads handed to them at Lexington, starting for some what might be the inglorious end of their careers because they are not interested in continuing with high stakes TOC level competition.
• Nobody knows what other schools are going to be running, and everybody finds out during the competition. And if you happen to be running something totally illogical that sounded really good back home, well, it’s too late now.
These apply fairly equally across the divisions, but of course with different ramifications. January in PF, for instance, is rich with competitive opportunities, but again, is it best to dive into a TOC bid tournament with a new case filled with untested ideas?
Well, what if there were an Academy Debate tournament the week before Big Lex?
• Seniors who are working hard on their cases would not have to present a finished case, but as judges they could hear what other folks are running andmaybe get some ideas therefrom.
• Seniors who have been working hard will get a chance to lecture and brainstorm their ideas
• A coach or two might do a half hour unit on background for both the PF and LD divisions
• A “lab” might do a training session on CX for all divisions
You get the picture. To pull this off requires commitment from everyone. There is a fear that some tournaments, primarily those without TOC bids, are not getting the attendance they deserve. (The likelihood that any new tournament will somehow work its way up to attaining bids is, honestly, about nil, given the politics of TOC.) At the same time, there is a big issue that we want younger students to remain in the activity if at all possible without becoming dispirited. Additionally, the removal of the need to provide hired judges seriously reduces the cost of debate in the region. And for large programs, there becomes a logical way to split the squad between events.
And that, in a rather large nutshell, is Academy Debate.
We need a division of debate that recognizes that while every student can benefit from forensics, not every student wishes to make it their life’s work. Additionally, we need to provide a better link from beginner to varsity, regardless of a student’s commitment to the activity. And finally, we need to insure that all our regional tournaments provide the community with appropriate levels of competition and engagement, so that our rich competitive calendar continues to thrive.
I offer the solution tentatively titled Academy Debate.
Academy Debate is, primarily, a level of competition that can be applied to any division of policy, LD or PF. Academy Debate is primarily intended for sophomores and juniors, and is open to anyone except seniors and students past their third year of debate (i.e., juniors who debated in middle school now in their fourth year would not be eligible to participate at the Academy Debate level).
Additionally, Academy Debate can be judged by seniors in their fourth year of debate. In fact, seniors in their fourth year are urged to judge, and will be considered not only judges but instructors, especially at tournaments that embrace the full Academy Debate designation.
We have a number of students at the senior level who have a lot to give to the community beyond their ability to adjudicate rounds less expensively than college students (although one reason for creating the Academy level is to remove the need to hire judges for local tournaments). This proposal intends to use those other skills of our upperclassmen. The idea is that if a tournament wishes to adopt an Academy Debate structure, the regional community will work with the tournament to develop a program beyond the rounds that will be interwoven into the tournament. Beyond-the-Rounds activities will include lectures and brainstorms on new resolutions, demo rounds by TOC-level seniors with commentary, stop rounds (coaches judging a round can break in at any time with advice and questions), background lectures by coaches and student instructors (e.g., a unit on sovereignty or due process or whatever). The hope is to slot maybe two or three of these special events into a tournament, during down time and even in lieu of a round.
Our belief is that this will invigorate tournaments that do not have TOC bids by making them appealing to younger students, who can come and actually learn something, and to older students, who can come and, quite frankly, show off their skills.
Any tournaments in the region could find material that would be of great interest in the Academy Debate model, depending on the time of year. There are always new resolutions to explore and new techniques to learn. For instance, look at January in the northeast. On Martin Luther King weekend we have Big Lex, a triple-threat TOC-level tournament with heavy competition in each division. Additionally, for most LDers this is the first TOC-level shot at the Jan-Feb resolution that will also be the TOC resolution and, probably, the NYSDCA resolution. In our present system:
• Seniors and TOC hopefuls are working hard on their cases, and have little interest in “prepping for Lex” at a tournament with competition not at their own level.
• Younger students are preparing to have their heads handed to them at Lexington, starting for some what might be the inglorious end of their careers because they are not interested in continuing with high stakes TOC level competition.
• Nobody knows what other schools are going to be running, and everybody finds out during the competition. And if you happen to be running something totally illogical that sounded really good back home, well, it’s too late now.
These apply fairly equally across the divisions, but of course with different ramifications. January in PF, for instance, is rich with competitive opportunities, but again, is it best to dive into a TOC bid tournament with a new case filled with untested ideas?
Well, what if there were an Academy Debate tournament the week before Big Lex?
• Seniors who are working hard on their cases would not have to present a finished case, but as judges they could hear what other folks are running andmaybe get some ideas therefrom.
• Seniors who have been working hard will get a chance to lecture and brainstorm their ideas
• A coach or two might do a half hour unit on background for both the PF and LD divisions
• A “lab” might do a training session on CX for all divisions
You get the picture. To pull this off requires commitment from everyone. There is a fear that some tournaments, primarily those without TOC bids, are not getting the attendance they deserve. (The likelihood that any new tournament will somehow work its way up to attaining bids is, honestly, about nil, given the politics of TOC.) At the same time, there is a big issue that we want younger students to remain in the activity if at all possible without becoming dispirited. Additionally, the removal of the need to provide hired judges seriously reduces the cost of debate in the region. And for large programs, there becomes a logical way to split the squad between events.
And that, in a rather large nutshell, is Academy Debate.
More articles we didn't finish reading
These headlines are all real, directly copied from our RSS feed without editing. When we say we didn't read them, we mean it. They didn't exactly pull us in, for some reason...
- Man ordered not to throw horseshit at Prince Charles
- EXCLUSIVE: David Petraeus Affair Photos
- Disney's 'Big Thunder Mountain' to Be Adapted for TV
- Kristen Stewart on 'New Moon': 'I wish I was better'
- Watch Live: The First ‘Friskies’ Awards for Internet Cat Videos
- Mick Jagger goes to the beach in astro-pervert hot pants, 1973
- The Gentleman’s Guide to Amputation
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Debate: The next tournaments
So, we move onward.
This weekend is Wee Sma’ Lex for the Sailors. We started going there when we stopped sending an oodle-load to Glenbrooks. Not that I didn’t like Glenbrooks; it was and presumably still is a great tournament with a very high QOL schedule. I stopped going when I was starting to realize that I was flying somewhere almost every weekend, and I preferred to stay a little closer to home. If Sailors wanted to go, I was all for it, but it was no longer the team event of the weekend. Wee Sma’ provided instead a first-time housing opportunity for novices, and a chance for younger students to get some meaningful rounds in. I was, and am, all for that.
We’re up to our ears in Princeton. The events are all packed, and nobody has dropped out yet, but I’ve scanned the list and as far as I can tell, the furthest flung are in, if they need to fly or whatever. Now we’re assembling judges and prepping to sell them to the assembled multitudes. As always, O’C is in charge of that, and, shockingly, in charge of trophies as well. It was he who kicked the Tiggers in the pants a while back and got them to upgrade from Dollar Store generics to the real thing. The point is, trophies mean something, especially with college tournaments peopled by hordes of Speecho-Americans. If the colleges don’t deliver, they look sort of punk. And considering how expensive college tournaments are because of transportation and hotels and everything, that’s not the right look.
Columbia is just getting geared up. They always have issues with getting their rooms, which always happens late, but last year they pulled off a great tournament, after pulling off less than great ones, and I see no reason why they can’t repeat. What might be different this year is angling in some policy; we’re working on a bizarre solution to the problem of wanting it but having no place to put it. We’ll see how that works out.
And finally, on a different note entirely, there’s the Byram Hills tournament. For this one, I’ve been pushing for the introduction of Academy Debate, and we’re good to go as far as the school is concerned. Now we have to focus in on what the bells and whistles will be. Academy Debate could be a big deal in the future for some of our local tournaments, making events directed primarily at younger varsity students a lot more valuable. I’ll talk about that more in depth shortly, as we come to some conclusions.
Anyhow, we had our first Sailors meeting in a while last night. Apparently there was a better Sailors meeting somewhere else, because two out of three of the novices came late and left early. I wanted to discuss how to argue, but never got past the basics, so how any of this applies to a debate round will remain a mystery to them, I guess. We also talked about December PF. I like it because it forces people to learn a lot about something they may know literally zip on. Even our Zip, taking economics as a class, couldn’t make heads nor tails out of it. I consider that a good thing. If you don’t learn anything from studying a resolution, what’s the point?
I still haven’t organized the Bump follow-up, like getting the checks to the office and whatever. I’ll do that before we leave on Friday. And, as we say, another one will officially bite the dust. I didn’t get any calls from the schools, so apparently nothing horrifying was left behind in our wake, except a couple ofbottled imps crappy prizes. So it goes.
This weekend is Wee Sma’ Lex for the Sailors. We started going there when we stopped sending an oodle-load to Glenbrooks. Not that I didn’t like Glenbrooks; it was and presumably still is a great tournament with a very high QOL schedule. I stopped going when I was starting to realize that I was flying somewhere almost every weekend, and I preferred to stay a little closer to home. If Sailors wanted to go, I was all for it, but it was no longer the team event of the weekend. Wee Sma’ provided instead a first-time housing opportunity for novices, and a chance for younger students to get some meaningful rounds in. I was, and am, all for that.
We’re up to our ears in Princeton. The events are all packed, and nobody has dropped out yet, but I’ve scanned the list and as far as I can tell, the furthest flung are in, if they need to fly or whatever. Now we’re assembling judges and prepping to sell them to the assembled multitudes. As always, O’C is in charge of that, and, shockingly, in charge of trophies as well. It was he who kicked the Tiggers in the pants a while back and got them to upgrade from Dollar Store generics to the real thing. The point is, trophies mean something, especially with college tournaments peopled by hordes of Speecho-Americans. If the colleges don’t deliver, they look sort of punk. And considering how expensive college tournaments are because of transportation and hotels and everything, that’s not the right look.
Columbia is just getting geared up. They always have issues with getting their rooms, which always happens late, but last year they pulled off a great tournament, after pulling off less than great ones, and I see no reason why they can’t repeat. What might be different this year is angling in some policy; we’re working on a bizarre solution to the problem of wanting it but having no place to put it. We’ll see how that works out.
And finally, on a different note entirely, there’s the Byram Hills tournament. For this one, I’ve been pushing for the introduction of Academy Debate, and we’re good to go as far as the school is concerned. Now we have to focus in on what the bells and whistles will be. Academy Debate could be a big deal in the future for some of our local tournaments, making events directed primarily at younger varsity students a lot more valuable. I’ll talk about that more in depth shortly, as we come to some conclusions.
Anyhow, we had our first Sailors meeting in a while last night. Apparently there was a better Sailors meeting somewhere else, because two out of three of the novices came late and left early. I wanted to discuss how to argue, but never got past the basics, so how any of this applies to a debate round will remain a mystery to them, I guess. We also talked about December PF. I like it because it forces people to learn a lot about something they may know literally zip on. Even our Zip, taking economics as a class, couldn’t make heads nor tails out of it. I consider that a good thing. If you don’t learn anything from studying a resolution, what’s the point?
I still haven’t organized the Bump follow-up, like getting the checks to the office and whatever. I’ll do that before we leave on Friday. And, as we say, another one will officially bite the dust. I didn’t get any calls from the schools, so apparently nothing horrifying was left behind in our wake, except a couple of
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Debate: Mini-Tales of Great Debate Adventure (Bump 2012 Edition)
Let’s see, let’s see, let’s see.
First of all, of course, there’s the annoying stuff, like the school that always insists on leaving before fulfilling their judging obligation. Same school every time, same look of wonder in their beady little eyes when we tell them they can’t do it, same reluctance on my part to let them into future tournaments where I’ve got any control because who needs the aggro?
And then there’s also that one school that didn’t show up at all. They also didn’t show up at Monticello. They are on the waitlist for the Tiggers, and I’m running the waitlist. I mean, what are the odds of that working out in their favor? The problem with getting yourself on my bad side is my ubiquity. I may be right or I may be wrong, but regardless, I'm the one pushing the buttons. Sacrificing the occasional goat to me can’t hurt.
I did start the novice events with a pretty negative complaint about what their predecessors had done in the past to cost me a whole wing of the building. Not these people, but their schools, and this could be the last time, yadda yadda yadda. I warned that I would be patrolling the halls to look in on them, which turned out to be remarkably easy as each door has a big window, or I could walk on the path outside and look in from there, so I didn’t have to disrupt anyone. Everyone seemed to be behaving. The only thing negative I heard was one idiot judging with his earbuds in, but I looked at his ballots and they were fine, so presumably he was just too dumb to take them out and was actually listening to the debaters and not his favorite G-pop groups.
A couple of new programs have survived so far, having debuted at the First Timers’, and are doing quite well. This is very nice to see. It’s hard enough just to keep body and soul together when you’re starting out, but to actually take some trophies? That’s an achievement. Usually by now the programs that peeped out at the first dawn have burrowed back in for another time. This is good.
O’C, as has been stated numerous times, only was able to stay for half the tournament because his associate, the G Man, was getting married. I like to thank my tabbers with a nice bottle of wine for their efforts. For O’C, it was a nice half-bottle of wine. There was also no Cruz Award this year, but I did find a menopause video for him to carry him over to next year.
As I said yesterday, I’ll eliminate the award ceremonies for the Varsity next year, but I’ll still keep one for the novices. I’ll do it down at the grammar school, which has a right-sized auditorium. The thing about novices is that the jokes either work really well with them (the word “orgasm” had them falling in the aisles) or else they look at me like I’m speaking Ardhamagadhi. They also liked my shout-out for Mitt Romney, probably because it’s the last time they’ll ever hear anyone do so. See ya, Mitt.
The Sailor runners seemed to be doing a good job; whenever I saw one, they were working. There were a couple I told to watch some rounds who apparently felt that this was the equivalent of snorkeling in quicksand, but I don’t necessarily chalk that up as my loss.
I am happy to report that we were awash with retirees. We threw all of them into LD at one point when we eked out a single-flighted round (there’s still blood on the library floor), but the ones who wanted Pffft mostly got it. We had a great alum dinner on Friday, when I wasn’t too exhausted to appreciate it, at India House, of course. We had some leftovers that we gave to Michelle to give to her male roommates at the funeral home, who will, apparently, eat anything (and live anywhere). Much discussion of living at a funeral home ensued, but for me, having had friends in grammar school and high school both who did exactly that, it wasn’t much of an issue. I’ve also had some neighbors who I would have preferred that they were dead—much quieter that way—but for some folks, this was pretty odd. Not so odd though that Olivieri, who was going to stay with me, opted for the House of the Dead instead, because of access to an iron. I mean, it’s not that I don’t have an iron in my house, but not at that time of night. Maybe it’s another sign of aging on my part: I just can’t feature ironing after bedtime.
The next day the daughter came up and we picked out a Christmas tree and ate Greek food and saw Wreck-it Ralph. And Bump was over for another year.
First of all, of course, there’s the annoying stuff, like the school that always insists on leaving before fulfilling their judging obligation. Same school every time, same look of wonder in their beady little eyes when we tell them they can’t do it, same reluctance on my part to let them into future tournaments where I’ve got any control because who needs the aggro?
And then there’s also that one school that didn’t show up at all. They also didn’t show up at Monticello. They are on the waitlist for the Tiggers, and I’m running the waitlist. I mean, what are the odds of that working out in their favor? The problem with getting yourself on my bad side is my ubiquity. I may be right or I may be wrong, but regardless, I'm the one pushing the buttons. Sacrificing the occasional goat to me can’t hurt.
I did start the novice events with a pretty negative complaint about what their predecessors had done in the past to cost me a whole wing of the building. Not these people, but their schools, and this could be the last time, yadda yadda yadda. I warned that I would be patrolling the halls to look in on them, which turned out to be remarkably easy as each door has a big window, or I could walk on the path outside and look in from there, so I didn’t have to disrupt anyone. Everyone seemed to be behaving. The only thing negative I heard was one idiot judging with his earbuds in, but I looked at his ballots and they were fine, so presumably he was just too dumb to take them out and was actually listening to the debaters and not his favorite G-pop groups.
A couple of new programs have survived so far, having debuted at the First Timers’, and are doing quite well. This is very nice to see. It’s hard enough just to keep body and soul together when you’re starting out, but to actually take some trophies? That’s an achievement. Usually by now the programs that peeped out at the first dawn have burrowed back in for another time. This is good.
O’C, as has been stated numerous times, only was able to stay for half the tournament because his associate, the G Man, was getting married. I like to thank my tabbers with a nice bottle of wine for their efforts. For O’C, it was a nice half-bottle of wine. There was also no Cruz Award this year, but I did find a menopause video for him to carry him over to next year.
As I said yesterday, I’ll eliminate the award ceremonies for the Varsity next year, but I’ll still keep one for the novices. I’ll do it down at the grammar school, which has a right-sized auditorium. The thing about novices is that the jokes either work really well with them (the word “orgasm” had them falling in the aisles) or else they look at me like I’m speaking Ardhamagadhi. They also liked my shout-out for Mitt Romney, probably because it’s the last time they’ll ever hear anyone do so. See ya, Mitt.
The Sailor runners seemed to be doing a good job; whenever I saw one, they were working. There were a couple I told to watch some rounds who apparently felt that this was the equivalent of snorkeling in quicksand, but I don’t necessarily chalk that up as my loss.
I am happy to report that we were awash with retirees. We threw all of them into LD at one point when we eked out a single-flighted round (there’s still blood on the library floor), but the ones who wanted Pffft mostly got it. We had a great alum dinner on Friday, when I wasn’t too exhausted to appreciate it, at India House, of course. We had some leftovers that we gave to Michelle to give to her male roommates at the funeral home, who will, apparently, eat anything (and live anywhere). Much discussion of living at a funeral home ensued, but for me, having had friends in grammar school and high school both who did exactly that, it wasn’t much of an issue. I’ve also had some neighbors who I would have preferred that they were dead—much quieter that way—but for some folks, this was pretty odd. Not so odd though that Olivieri, who was going to stay with me, opted for the House of the Dead instead, because of access to an iron. I mean, it’s not that I don’t have an iron in my house, but not at that time of night. Maybe it’s another sign of aging on my part: I just can’t feature ironing after bedtime.
The next day the daughter came up and we picked out a Christmas tree and ate Greek food and saw Wreck-it Ralph. And Bump was over for another year.
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