Checking in

Give me a minute here. Reentry takes longer than you think. For the moment, just some random thoughts.

1. See Billy Elliot, the musical. See the movie, for that matter, if you haven't already, but that's not what I'm talking about. (For those of you in the know, if there were a book, you could also read that, given that all media are interchangeable in certain eyes, but that's an issue for another day.)

2. Don't read The Half-Blood Prince. Not that it's bad, really, but not much happens, give or take the obvious, and if you want all sorts of new stuff, you'll apparently have to wait till the climax. On the other hand, reading Harry in the UK adds a certain charm, I must say. So does reading Wodehouse on golf.

3. Figure out a way to eliminate spam. Please. Talk about clogging the old mailbox. I did get some really superior phishing posts on the old AOL account while I was away, though. I like to figure out where the error is and I enjoy it when I'm especially stumped. I entered O'C's social security number into a couple of the best ones.

4. I sent out umpty-ump requests for Districts judges and have startlingly received quite a few fewer than umpty-ump responses. Jeesh. We're going to have to ask O'C again, I guess. Worse things have happened, though. He likes when I sit in my comfy chair at the chez and give the "Engage!" command.

5. No judges have turned up for speech at Regionals, so I guess they're giving up the ghost, given that tonight is the deadline. This is not good, but I can't imagine what one could do about it. Whatever happened to rabidity? We used to have Speecho-Americans you couldn't fight off with a stick! Those were the golden years.

6. I thought there'd be at least three new versions of the iPod released while I was away. Jobs has been sleeping on the job, I guess. Or his employees have been sleeping on the Jobs. Or something.

7. Wallace & Gromit is perfect for an airplane. And probably anywhere else. I really didn't think it would work for a whole feature, but what do I know? Pass the cheese, what.

8. Fortunately I prepared material for tonight's meeting before I left last week, because I plan to be asleep on my feet in about 45 minutes, when the jet lag usually kicks in.

It's been swell

I'm packing up, which isn't all that hard to do given that I'm not away that long. Mostly, as I've said, it's issues like what to read and what to put onto the Nano rather than what color socks. Although socks will be something of a necessity; it's as cold there as it is here, more's the pity. Oh, well. Winter is winter, and I'd rather be in London to visit the queen than in Cortlandt Manor watching Dora the Explorer reruns.

No, I don't watch Dora the Explorer, either in reruns or in the original. Jeesh.

I love the fact that everyone on the Hudwarts team believes that someone else's parents will judge. It just doesn't work that way. As in States, for instance, where our one parent can cover 4; it's interesting how everyone thinks they know who the 4 will be, now that we've got the one parent. Yeah, right. For that matter, for all I know it's 1 to 3; I haven't seen the invite yet. And we haven't filled up the Grands list yet, probably because of that same judging issue, although Termite thinks his unqualified dad can judge. I don't know where some of our other stalwarts are. Maybe they're just less stalwart than I thought, despite the fact that our varsity all have a good chance of going to Chicago. Oh, well...

On return, and back at meetings, we'll attack such lovely subjects as, Debate as Story, Logical Fallacies, How to Research, and that old favorite, Scots Poetry reading. Pass the tatties, lass. We haven't done Scots poetry in a dog's age, and it was quite the hit in its day. It's time to bring it back. And I've been trying to hire some Districts judges, mostly for the tournament at large (Districts eats judges and spits 'em out fast). I've really got to think Districts when I return. I've sent out the announcement, but there's all sorts of prep work. And post work. Oh, well, it's the big bucks and all that make it worth the hassle.

I'll bring you back a banger.

Oh joy. Oh rapture.

Noah actually thinks I'm right about something (see previous post). Gainful employment must be going to his head.

Meanwhile, I am in the throes of doing things like deciding on airplane reading (Harry, yes, Delirious NY, maybe) and what would be the perfect electronic toy to buy that I don't already own so as to pass the empty flying hours, mostly because not only have I ground to a halt, but so has the debate universe. I mean, I guess the poor schlubs up at Harvard still think things are happening, but everyone knows they're just throwing their money into the Harvard team's coffers in the biggest scam since that very first coach decided that ziti was suitable food to serve at debate tournaments. There's the steady trickle of LDEP stuff, but I'll let them resolve themselves while I'm away, and if nothing has happened, I'll try one more barrage before heading off to the dinosaur burial grounds. I'll need to talk to a couple of people directly about the Modest Novice. And States? Well, we didn't expect anything this year, and since no one from HH will probably even go, I won't worry about it much. I sent an update to the entire team yesterday in an attempt to energize them to find judges/chaperones, but there was no immediate response. I am going to have to do some serious hiring for Districts (not to cover us, but for the tournament in general), and I'll start that this weekend. Otherwise, it's just cleaning up the crumbs.

On the positive side, some of the Jolly Tars are heading down to NYC to research tomorrow. Normally they would go to a library, but given the nature of the new topic, they're just heading to Chelsea to attempt to mug tourists to see what happens when they get arrested. This will allow them to run a post-performatic critique, and I'm all in favor of it.

O'C is still not responding to me. I guess he's been sucked into the mother ship via his Intergalactic Network Chip that OMG purchased for him. He's probably happy up there with all the other trekkers. (And did I tell you I was watching Firefly? Why did this show go off the air? Jeesh.)

Special entry: From the guy who thinks he won Newark 3 times

Comment to blog post from yesterday that was too long, according to Blogger:


I honestly can't remember the last time I heard you talk broadly about
a debate topic and agreeing with EVERYTHING you said; I must be
slipping in my old age. Jeff Hannon, who was the kid in finals my
senior year at Harvard who, when a cell phone rang a minute into his
1AC interrupted himself and said, "telephone?" (he was one of my Nova
boys.) In every round, he used to basically fall asleep during the
negative's speaking time and get up cross ex and ask, "so what don't
they understand?" And he was like a big fourth grader and it was
clearly the most intelligent question anyone was forcing. He'd just
ask the same thing over and over again, kind of like asking one of
these semi-pubescents arguing statism critiques "do you really believe
a single word of this you little 16 year old blessed soul?" No kid in
debate can say that they're meaningfully different from adults.

If you want to know, the most effective argument I found was
predicated on this evidence from an author I can't remember who wrote
a very good quote explaining why VIOLENT people, regardless of age,
are not amenable to rehabilitation. Frankly, the neg (if that's the
"treat them like adults" side) can't argue about retribution because
that criterion for punishment gives a pretty clear mandate. I
remember reading that just punishment has four attendant criteria that
can be deemed more or less important that one another in debate and
also ranked, lexically, as it were (this was always the best part of
punishment topics.) The thought experiment where you consider whether
to harshly punish a man in his mid-90s who's two years away from death
and is, for the sake of the thought experiment, both repentant and
assured never to commit a crime again, is hard to answer in harsh
terms, specifically given that the punishment proposed in the original
incarnation of the thought experiment is between jail time and
consignment to a deserted island (which is obviously meant as a trick
because the point is that he's basically denied of pleasure but he's
not a threat to anyone, just like the presumptively reformed criminal
(who may have been a very bad kid when he shot that pregnant lady)).
The evidence in support of the state's ability to rehabilitate people,
even those who are said to be climinically amenable to treatment, is
fairly weak but there's good reason to critique it in light of the
quality of the attempts tried. And all of that said, there was an
argument that you alluded to in your overview that I thought was very
important for the negative but it was hard to make convincingly
because it was so simple that it seemed almost wasteful to devote a
lot of time to it. Since I think trying and punishing kids like
adults means housing them in the facilities (the argument for the
right to affirm while housing kids in separate facilities was that
they could still receive adult-like punishment but there were at least
two responses: first, that's ridiculous. No matter how savage they
were on the whole, it would be impossible where adults relate to
soulless teennagers the way they might to an adult on death row
(people who'd committed the same crime.) Basically, to separate kids
would be separating them on the basis of their juvenility, meaning
that, a priori (there's no other way to put it...), kids were not
being treated like adults if incarcerated separately. You couldn't
affirm the resolution that women should be treated like men in the
criminal justice system by observing that they should still be house
in separate facilities on the basis that men and women can't live
together, at least in prison.)) I mention all of this because the
evidence on what happens to kids in hard core detention who are housed
amongst adults is really disgusting. I thought I had this really good
part of my case where I read the universally accepted statistics on
the relative likelihood of rape, abuse, dropping the soap, and then
"analytically" explained in mathematical terms what that meant on an
hourly basis for kids versus adults. Given that, as a criterion, its
pretty easy to argue that no matter how bad the bad guy, it's always
worse to convict one innocent than to let ten to go free; accordingly,
subjecting equally guilty people to egregiously different punishments
isn't worth it because of the injustice done to the relatively less
innocent (yes, the cases are not perfectly analogous but I'm sure you
can see a relevant parallel.) So this point could've been really
effective in "turning" the aff case, since violent adults are no worse
than kids who kill Crips , then consigning the kid to an equally long
period behind bars wherein, and I'm not just pulling this out of my
ass, 9 times more likely to raped and absurdly likely to deal with
more than mundane work in the laundry room or even hammering out
license plates, seems pretty cruel. It would be like putting, at
minimum, androgynous people, let alone women, in the same facilities
as most sexual predators, let alone generally bad people. I thought
the point was good, too, because it did what good negatives on the
capital punishment topic did: point out some inherent problem, not
even gross Oz episode, with the affirmative and then just ask, "so
what's the point?" Capital punishment, to me, is ultimately stupid
because it's pretty useless and, at least as a policy, there are some
pretty big downsides and my feelings about this topic are the same,
though.

I always flipped aff, though, and, with the exception of the very
beginning (Newark being the biggie), I lost on this topic but I always
thought I got screwed and not just like I always got screwed (everyone
knows that if I lost I got screwed but the degree of legitimate
bitterness was slightly different from case.) If you can get one
point across, tell those NFL people that it's retarded that the two
most popular topics are debate by an overwhelming minority of
debaters, since they're in March-April (#2) and Nationals (#1). Who
thinks of this shit?

----

We return now to our regularly scheduled blogger...

Winding down

I sent out the JJ topic materials last night; a ton o' stuff to sort through. It was fun reading the names of the old debaters at the time, and seeing the cases they were running. And interesting to figure that all the old problems will return to haunt us. There are so many ways to argue the rez poorly, and a lot of ways to argue it interestingly, and with any luck, the people doing the latter will be able to avoid the people doing the former, but as always with that, it's Good luck, Charlie.

Jeff, having taken umbrage at being accused of looking like a debater, from a post roughly as old as my socks, claims that the novices now not only read this blog, but that one of them even has it bookmarked! Will wonders never cease! Next thing you know, NoShow will turn up at two meetings in a row, and I'll have run out of bile fodder.

I thought next week was a full break for them, as it is for me, but there is school Wed thru Fri, the poor dears. I was hoping they'd use the week off to pretend to research (except, I guess, for Jeff, who would simply look like he was pretending to research, and the bookmark guy, who would take the opportunity to do all sorts of other exotic computer-agey things, like maybe attempting double-clicking). Oh, well. Maybe they'll learn something in school.

I did start writing up the BusinessMan lecture, but it's going to take forever to make it intelligible. Talking is one thing, writing is a whole 'nother thing altogether. Which should not be such a great appercu for a forensics coach, but I do suffer from a slight case of Debate Dementia (and don't say you haven't noticed), so forgive me this once. And speaking of forgiveness, or debate dementia, if O'C really expects me to photograph my tin, he will test my software. (Parse that, you spalpeen!) Of course, he'll never know my concern because he never reads this blog--he's too busy posing for the cover of Atlas Shrugged, which is the only explanation I can come up with for that bizarre picture of him on the VBI advertisement. "Who is Jon Cruz?" Hmmmm. You could make a slogan out of that!

Jersey has chimed in favorably on the Modest Novice. Mostly that leaves the families running the New York territories to make it a reality. Somebody'll have to make 'em an offer they can't refuse. And if you're interested, we're going to pair the third round of Grands hi-low, which makes a lot of sense to me. It used to be hi-hi, which means the top two hit, and it wasn't unusual for one to put the other out of qualification, even though they clearly both deserved it. Now it's like a short invitational tournament, where one round can't ground you. That is as it should be. We are trying to qualify the best, after all, not just have them knock each other out of contention.

Juvenalia

Last night we dug deeply into the new resolution. I share the following with you (and, yeah, I mean you, you base spalpeen) in the hopes that it will increase the quality of your discourse. Although honestly, there won't be much debating of this sucker by the Jolly Tars. I mean, there's Grands, of course, but States doesn't look likely (they've got no judge) and, well, Districts is just filler...

So anyhow, first there's the question of what a juvenile actually is. In a round, there should be no question about the existence of same. Society clearly defines juveniles for all sorts of activities (voting, marriage, driving, drinking, etc.), so there's no great claim that the state of not being an adult doesn't exist or is somehow culturally insignificant. Arguments that hinge on your somehow changing on your 18th birthday are, in a word, inane. The rez is not asking if you change your stripes on a birthday, or if you're a chrysalis emerging on some pre-ordained day on which you are capable of emergence. Society makes this sort of arbitrary determination every day, you chump, because it has no mechanism to do otherwise. Nor is the rez asking us to evaluate if 8-year-olds should be tried as adults, because we don't need any evidence whatsoever to know that 8-year-olds are not adults. The rez wants to know what to do about that indeterminate group, viz., teenagers. They seem to be capable of taking responsibility for their actions. But are they indeed fully responsible? That's what you should be arguing. Anything else is just sophistry, and not even good sophistry at that.

We talked a lot about the difference of the juvenile justice system and the adult justice system. And the natures of tried and punished, both of which are required by the rez. We talked about the relevant cases in the US (e.g. Roper) and how, I guess, the US is presently neg (which says nothing about either side being right or wrong). We pointed out why the topic, while not referring specifically to the US, should be argued in a US context (because reasonable discourse on the subject requires knowledge of the concepts of "tried and punished," which one can only conclude will arise if we concentrate on the US; if one side talks about Ugabugaland, and the other side talks about Ix, there is no reasonable discourse possible because there is no common ground, but once reasonable discourse DOES ensue, then that discourse's conclusions can be applied to any arena). But mostly we thought about what makes all the people on the team different from me. Seriously. They're all juveniles; I'm not. So, what is it about them that theoretically makes them less culpable for their crimes. Answer that question well, and you win the aff. Disprove the statement, and you win the neg. And lordy lordy, this is one evidential topic, because intuitively I look at two debaters standing there arguing with (at least some) maturity about whether or not they are mature, and I believe completely that they are easily capable of understanding culpability, so you'd better have some serious facts or figures to overcome not my prejudice but the immediate clear evidence of my eyes and ears.

Anyhow, I'll send out the old background info tonight over the listserver. I won't update from the old JJ topic, since there really isn't much difference. There are some references and links in my notes that are outdated, though, and I will expunge them. And you, you spalpeen, now know how to think about Mar-Apr, so you can save a few bucks buying old cases from LOL. Hell, I'll send you my notes for nothing if you want more (and I even include a bunch of case positions, among which the Empty-V is a classic pre-pomo from back in the day when bizarre cases were a noteworthy event).

A Scarswegian Idyll

Irons in the fire? Let's see. There's the States fracas. There's the LDEP fracas. And there's the Modest Novice fracas (although that one hasn't drawn any flies yet). It's been a busy year, eh, mate?

So how was Scarsdale, anyhow? Well, we have the continuing issue of squeezing a relatively large team into a relatively small bus, which was not ameliorated by Mr T's car dying in the Montrose shopping center. He claims his car just doesn't like debating, since this is not the first time he's had this problem. On the benefit side, I was able to send him off with the bus early Friday night while we continued to tab away, so worse things have happened. To be honest, I like these little buses, because the seats have more leg room than the big ones, plus if necessary there's plenty of room in the back to dump stuff. What more could you ask? No room for the teeming millions of Scarswegians or whatever to travel along with us, but you can't have everything.

Tabbing Scarsdale is an interesting challenge. First of all, there's the varsity division, and its judges. Then there's the novice division, which has in its judging pool all of the varsity judges, plus all of the varsity debaters who are able to judge. Then there's the Pfft division, with its small pool of very quickly sullied judges. What you have to do is, first, pair and assign the varsity. Then you pull out the extra adults and funnel them into PF and out of the novice pool for that round. Then you assign the novice judges, making sure that you're alternating the varsity students, i.e., giving them at least one round off after a round on so as not to overload the poor darlings, except in the break from rounds 1 to 2, where anything can happen. Then you find the varsity judges that are in both divisions and you change their novice room to the same as their varsity room. All of which adds up to a lot of work. And not a lot of Jack, if you know what I mean. But it all worked with only a couple of hitches, usually when we had to sub in a judge, which is why all judges need to be in all the right places at all the right times, because subbing is a royal pain and leads to issues, especially when a judge can be in any or all of three divisions. But seldom are all judges in the right places at the right times. The brain damage that affects many of them who, for some reason, forget to pick up ballots but go to rounds anyhow, is baffling, especially since this is usually former TOC people. The minds go, I guess, once they reach college. Then there's the parents who disappear. Literally. I mean, where can they go? And don't they understand that we would all like to disappear, and doing so really isn't an option?

Aaaarrrghh!

Throughout all of this, Typhoid Mimi kept dropping by to cough and collect nostrums from the assorted hypochondriacs that tab rooms tend to attract, and we kept trying to play Text Twist, and good old Grandpod kept on chootling despite the fact that everyone else had Gen 5s and I really want one but I'm holding out for Gen 6 which will have a bigger screen (turn it sideways, Steve) if I'm any guesser of such things iPodian. And the Saturday puzzle was practically a gimme, so that was a bust. When I first started tabbing, these rooms were quieter than the Vatican on the Pope's day off, but nowadays they're louder than the cafeteria during ziti distribution. But it's probably more fun, and that's something, anyhow.

Meanwhile, results on the floor were interesting. HoraceMan, the superhero without any superpowers, managed to lose the toss: that must be the part that Noah was coaching him on. (Noah is coaching him? Poor HoraceMan. Poor Noah.) The Hardware Engineer placed 17th, which is always a thrill. Termite and Peanuts both broke, thus proving the value of a nickname early in one's career. Emcee and Matt broke in Varsity, while at the same time Javo was killing 'em up in Congress. Ewok managed to get a speaker award, pulling victory from the jaws and whathaveyou. All in all, a fine weekend for the good guys. We managed to unload the Bump candy, so now Dave is even again, or he will be tonight when I give him his check. And so we bid a fond farewell to--

All right. Bidding farewell was harder than you think. It was starting to snow when we left, so I told CLG ixnay on the Indian Ousenay, but as time and the car progressed, it got drier and drier and CLG sounded hungrier and hungrier, so I called Liz who said she was in, it was cold, Pip was on her lap, and she wasn't moving come hell or high water. Fortunately, la mere de la Claire relented--she had been telling young C that she would have to eat elsewhere because this was Unitarian Taco Night--and allowed the prodigal daughter into the house for dinner. I guess one of the Unitarians bowed out at the last moment.

And thus Scarsdale II is in the can!

I have seen the future

So I managed to judge a couple of rounds of Pffft on Saturday. With all the complications of varsity judging novices and adult judges in LD and Pffft, it was something of a busy tab room, although I have to admit there were no problems with not one not two but three iterations of the new software. Amazin', as we used to say about the Mets. I tried to zip a copy of the old file to O'C, but when I did I stopped hearing from him. By then he had probably had enough of me, the blizzard and Texas, in that order. So it goes.

My point, anyhow, is that I enjoyed the Pffft. The idea that you needed a little bit of evidence for your side but a good bit of knowledge to rebut, and that you focus on just a point or two made for interesting clash. And it's over before you know it. Hard to imagine them running a theory of Pffft argument, if you know what I mean (although someone could have no doubt argued 20 years ago that it would be hard to imagine anyone running a theory of LD argument). The Israeli topic is a hard one, by me a lot harder than a lot of the others I've seen, and I applaud those folks I watched who were debating it. Regis took the final; CLG and I were in agreement, as was our third confrere. If LD is going to go down the tubes, which seems more than likely at this point, it's nice to know there's something there to replace it with some real potential. Mix a little speaking ability, a lot of research, and a little case writing, and you've got something pretty good. You'll lose the philosophical underpinnings, but then again, in an activity that thinks that Derrida and Baudrillard are philosophers with more weight than [name any 20 off the top of your head], we may not be losing all that much.

Speaking of LD going down the tubes, let's see. Pffft has planted a flag at TOCs, so that's step one. Pffft is about to plant a flag at CatNats (where there is no dearth of parents to judge it). I'm thinking of doing Pffft at Bump (maybe putting aside 10 Policy rooms, which means another nail in THAT particular coffin). I'm getting seriously tired of hounding the LDers to provide parental judges to cover their entries. When a given tournament offers strikes, everyone inevitably strikes the people with Mr in front of their name, which only makes it even more likely that Mister won't show up next time, and certainly keeps Mister that much more inexperienced. LDEP and the proverbial call to arms is winding down to, at best, a call to fingers, and not many of them. I hold out less hope as each day progresses that this particular group will martial its forces and make anything happen.

And will I miss LD? I don't know. If I refocus on Pffft, it will mean there's plenty of Pffft around, it means the topic changes all the time, which I love, and I won't have to contend with speed or non-resolutional argumentation or bogus scholarship. Will I miss LD? Ultimately, it's really hard to say. But if I had to bet, I would bet that, miss it or not, I won't be doing it.

Uncharacteristic Sunday posting

But it is snowing, and I'm addressing odds and ends. And you look pretty odd around the end, so here we go.

And, Jeez, I toss out the mildest insult and everyone seems to go ballistic. (I was first going to say postal, and then I started thinking about various coaches going postal and was going to say something like, going Menickistic, except I wasn't going to say Menick, if you get my driftwood, but I decided that the libel/slander laws may not provide all the protection I would like to have, so I decided on ballistic.) All right. I give up. You've all read Swift in the original Greek. You've all read Huck in the original Latin. And you've all read Aristotle in the original Position. I'll never insult you in this blog again. (I'll wait till we're together, when it's more fun.)

So here's the message I just sent to the powers the pow in NY, NJ and Ma. I trust I didn't forget any...

---

A NOVICE PROPOSAL

This came up in a discussion a few weeks ago at
Lexington, and it seemed almost immediately to be a
great and workable idea.

One of the problems we always face with new novices is
that not only must we train them for LD in general,
but we also have to start them on the Sept-Oct topic,
whatever it is, followed almost immediately by the
Nov-Dec topic, whatever that is. The likelihood that
the way we train the novices will somehow be congruent
with the content of these topics is pretty small (at
least it always has been for me), and worse, you
barely have time for one before you’re onto another. I
don’t know about you, but I don’t like to even begin
talking topic to the novices until October, which
means that I’m talking Sept-Oct to them while trying
to brainstorm Nov-Dec with them and everyone else at
the same time. It’s a bad system.

The suggestion is that we pick a topic, and
henceforth, that topic is always the novice topic from
September through the end of November. This would
apply to the MHL area, the MFL area, NYC, and New
Jersey. And while I don’t think we cross paths that
early in the year, it would be great if the closer
parts of Long Island also joined in.

By doing this, we allow ourselves to develop a starter
curriculum about a topic that we know is good for
starting. We get to use that curriculum year after
year. We get to concentrate on whatever we believe we
should be concentrating on with our newcomers, without
the distraction of not one but two random topics.
Meanwhile, according to the natural evolution of
topics, the novices will certainly be involved in
discussions of the real Nov-Dec. And they will have
their chance to write and present cases for it in
December events. (We had originally thought of simply
having a novice topic through the end of December, but
there is a point at which we are stepping beyond the
bounds we can set ourselves—i.e., lots of us send
novices to Princeton, which would of necessity run the
national topic—and the novices do have to get into the
swing of things sooner or later, and the end of
November was “later” enough.)

Realistically speaking, we can do this if we all agree
to it. I can set this as the novice topic at MHLs,
Eric can set it throughout Manhattan. Lynne has the
ability to set it throughout Massachusetts (which is
important for the few but crucial crossover events in
November), Bill and Dario and co. can set it in
Jersey, and Bro John can implement on the Island.

At this point, we would like to get your thoughts on
this. I am very strongly in favor of it. If you like
the idea, suggestions for which topic, and exact
wording, would be welcome. Personally, I like
“Oppressive government is more desirable than no
government,” because I get to work out all the social
contract stuff that I like to give novices at the
beginning of the year. In conversations, other topics
have been suggested, but I don’t remember the exact
wordings (this is called selective memory; the only
one I remember is the one I like). If we all agree to
this, and if there’s no fly in the ointment that I’m
missing, and we can agree to a topic in the next month
or two, I see no reason why we couldn't begin this in
2006-7.

Old homeys

Noah dropped by yesterday. Now that Stripe is gone I guess he feels it's marginally safer to enter the building, although Pip did give him the evil eye on occasion. Got and gave various updates on various old-timers. One thing we didn't discuss was how he would be featuring pornmeister on his resume when he sets out for law school. I mean, do you lead with this, or put in on a special adults-only second page? My guess is that most law schools would see this as the perfect background for anyone wishing to become an attorney, but more I cannot say being that this is, well, a PG page. My daughter was originally scheduled to join us but now that she's joined the ranks of the gainfully employed (in a literary agency, a la Jared). she couldn't make it up from the city for the night.

We talked a little about novices (and I still have to work out my Modest Proposal for same, which does not include eating them, for the most part [and that's the perfect example of what I mean when I say, If you were smarter, I'd be funnier]). He suggested the idea of using MHLs as some sort of institute or training beyond just the rounds. Actually, he was positioning one's entire first year or two as non-competition-oriented. Interesting idea, worth developing. I'll get on it with, if you'll pardon a pun you won't understand, with all swiftness.

Speaking of which, what, if anything, do people read in schools these days? When I was recently talking about firing cannnons over the water to raise dead bodies a la Huck, I was regarded as more insane than the usual everyday insanity regard that I am used to... Although I do have to admit I never have understood how that cannon was going to do the job, so if someone can enlighten me on that, please go for it.

Off to Scarsdale tomorrow. There's hints of snow in the forecast for Saturday but I'm ignoring them until tomorrow, at which point they'll either be the Blizzard of '06 or minor showers and not to worry. Fingers crossed, yet again.

The Ballad of LDEP

The drama continues. A little while ago I got a copy of LDEP's Tournament Policies document. It's not far from what I was saying, but there were differences. And did the floodgates open? Na'ah. I got the impression that these folk, whatever they decide to do, will keep it sort of milquetoast, which is just not right. So, throwing caution to the winds, I followed up with this. At this point, they'd probably be happy to see me disappear completely from the LD universe. No doubt they're hoping that I'm one of those Good-bye LD, Hello Pfft coaches. Not yet, folks...

Last night I introduced "Businessman," the soon-to-be-famous lecture on how business works. This comes from seeing how many creative spellings of laissez-faire our novices were able to come up with in their Jan-Feb paragraphs, not to mention how many creative understandings. I would say I'm about 50% of the way there with it; all the material is there that I want to cover, but it wants better organization. I'll play with it for a while (that always keeps me out of mischief) until I can store it away until it's needed again. How can you argue Big Boxes if you don't understand Businessman, eh?

I updated the schedule yesterday with all the changes resulting from the Bump move. Interesting. I think I missed one or two things, but I'll get to them shortly. I more and more like Ridge on the Bump weekend, especially if they offer a novice division, which they've said they might. That does open up the first weekend in Jan for a possible MHL, too, and I haven't completely abandoned the MHL in December (although I've come close; that one's always tough). On the other hand, I've always wanted to travel in December, and have never been able to. Venice for Christmas! Or Santa Fe? WDW, before the crowds descend? Lots of possibilities, none of which existed when Bump was in the way. Not that I moved it to open up my vacation possibilities, but now that I *have* moved it, I'm not blind to the possibilities.

Oh, yeah. I sent O'C a link to, good grief, an R2D2 PotatoHead. This is getting ridiculous. I mean, PotatoHeads are taking over the popular imagination, or at least they're trying to. What's next? Karl Rove PotatoHead? Hillary PotatoHead? Mr. Peanut PotatoHead? The possibilities are, I hasten to point out, not endless. On the other hand, I can imagine a nice line of debate Bobbleheads. O'C Bobblehead. Menick Bobblehead. The ever-popular Soddy Bobblehead. There is definitely a market for them, as compared to, say, the O'C PotatoHead. I'd pay good money for an O'C Bobblehead, but I wouldn't give you the time of day for an O'C PotatoHead. But maybe that's just personal taste.

Money

This morning I met with an incredible number of people from the district to discuss the subject of budget-cutting. Ouch. We are not alone in being asked to trim down; we're only alone in that everyone else works at the school and I work somewhere else, so I'm not a party to the normal business process. Like everyone else, we've been asked to trim by about 10% next year. This year, of course, without Bump profits but with the cost of the trophies, we're hurting. Next year, with an eye on the ball, we should be okay. I will have to raise Bump fees a little to cover custodial costs (shades of Bigle X). And we will have to continue to keep a tight eye on unnecessary buses; apparently there's a form for parental transportation, and we'll get these for the future. All in all I can continue to report that the team has the strongest possible support of the district, but we are in the mix like everyone else and must face economic reality.

And how does Veteran's Day sound to you? 'Cause that's the next Bump. We have officially moved our weekend. Moving a debate weekend is like moving Peoria: it's a big deal. But we will no longer have to worry about snow cancellations, which is good, but we will now have to hit the ground running in September, which is nuts. Ridge can segue into the old Bump weekend, and maybe we can put an MHL on the old Ridge weekend... Anyhow, I'll need to do lots of planning over the summer, but my vacation will be over in June, and I can put the old shoulder to the wheel and get gwine from there.

Just a reminder. I hate Bump. All TDs hate their tournaments. Unless they're insane. Which means about half of the TDs hate their tournaments, if you do the math correctly.

Speaking of which, Joe seems to have a nice boatload for this weekend, with 2 divisions of LD nicely filled plus a decent contingent of Pfffters. I'm really looking forward to it, because of all the complications of playing with the novice judges who are in the varsity. 2 or 3 rounds each, nicely spaced, is the goal. Judging every round is too stressful. And I'd like to get into a round or two myself, as I've said. And I need to unload all the candy that Dave bought. Or Dan, as the district people refer to him. Close enough, I guess.

Newark

Newark has always been a good tournament for Hen Hud, combining as it does an invitational with an MHL, giving ample opportunity for anyone to try their hand at the old debate game. When I first started going, the invitational was much smaller than it is now, and we were dumb enough to come home late Friday night and go back again on Saturday, putting us into a state of virtually complete catatonia. Then I learned about the hotel. It was also one of the first tournaments I tabbed, and I can remember showing Dario the ropes as much as I knew them. I also remember what really happened those years everyone thinks Noah won the tournament, but I'll keep all that to myself.

This year I once again missed the invitational part in favor of the MHL, since I do have to run the latter. Four of the Sailors' finest managed to escape the clutches of the school by the skin of their teeth, and McLean managed to break his way through to Octos. As for the MHL, NoShow managed to take tin, and even showed up at the awards ceremony to pick it up! Talk about your never-ceasing wonders. This is the problem: these Mets people just have different priorities from the rest of us. Sometimes, like BenT, they even have different wardrobes. They inevitably have different email addresses, like ILOVEMETS, which looks to me like "I love 'em: ETs," but that's just me... I haven't been to a Mets game since the year they were formed, which was down at the Polo Grounds (am I remembering that correctly?). Since then I have been to a Yankees game and a Brewers game, one every twenty years without fail, and if Rose J-T ever comes back, I may even go to some other game, if my companions can ignore the kicking and screaming in the car driving over. Once I get there, just give me a hot dog and I'll shut up.

Then again, I shouldn't complain about sports. For the second year in a row I won the office SuperBowl pool. I am obviously quite the expert at picking blank boxes, a skill no debate coach should venture forth without.

Prior to rooting for my blank boxes last night, I worked up the Districts letter and sent it out, which is one more chore out of the way for the year. We did finish the final MHL of the year Saturday on a high, with some money in the bank and everybody geared up for next year. I love having the various UDL teams there; they do fill up a division! Of course, they also send in a new registration almost every day, but then again, no one sends in as many registrations per tournament as O'C. I've got my email filter set to automatically delete all but the last one unless there's abject apologies; we let the normal apologies go unnoticed, but the abject apologies are dipped in bronze and stored for the future, to be given away as double-octos awards.

Update: I saw Stefan and Lakeland now is looking at the first weekend of December for their all-policy tournament, alternating with Weston. This would be fine, as there would be no conflict with anyone; LDers could head down to Princeton.

Tomorrow night I give the famous (or what will become the famous) business lecture, and we begin brainstorming juvenile justice. Seems like old times, eh? I briefly looked over my old topic notes, which are voluminous. Who needs Victory Briefs when you've got a big hard drive? What do they charge over there at JD central, anyhow? I'll undercut 'em. Nobody beats our prices for old ideas and bad case positions! Send checks, cash, money orders, Muppet stamps, whatever. The only thing that's changed since the last time was the recent court decision, the one where certain SCOTUSians went ballistic over the idea that it was an accepted practice around the globe not to send children to sit on the lap of Old Sparky. Doesn't make it any more right or wrong, though. And you can commit a violent crime without mandating capital punishment. Anyhow, I'll go over all the old notes in detail tonight. Ah, the memories...

Stripe

Good old Stripe lived about twice as long as any other cat we've ever had.

We originally got him when Kate was about seven years old. She wanted a cat of her own, and had her heart set on a tiger striped kitten. So set, in fact, that she already had the name selected before we even saw any cats. We found an ad in the Pennysaver and followed it to a house where the closest we could come to a striped cat was the completely stripeless creature that immediately decided that he wanted to go home with my daughter. Since Kate had an almost perfectly good name picked already, it seemed silly not to use it. So Stripe joined the family.

Stripe did the job we had asked him to do. He was a great cat for a kid, and although he gave nothing more than a raised eyebrow to the kind of hijinks that Pip is so notorious for--this cat wasn't jumping in the air for anyone, thank you very much--he was the perfect warm body at the foot of the bed, or in your lap, or cuddled up with the other cats in the family. As my mother used to say, he had charisma (and, simply put, Stripe always used to favor my mother's lap at every opportunity). Eventually it was Stripe and Pip at the household pets, and Pip quickly proved himself more fleet and more powerful, but he always acceded to Stripe as the dominant cat in the household. When they played together, it was Pip who allowed Stripe to win. It was, as everyone knew, including Pip, the right thing to do.

In his day Stripe looked like quite the bruiser, but he was more hair than brawn. Still, he scared the bezooties out of a couple of people who weren't expecting him. Near the end, he lost a lot of weight, and there wasn't much left of him. When he sat in my lap this Sunday while I was reading the newspaper, the tiniest wind could have blown him away. According to the vet, he seems to have had a stroke; his system pretty much just gave up working.

There will be other cats. Pip will adjust to being alone for awhile, and then there will be a kitten from somewhere to shake things up. But Stripe will be remembered. He had a special fondness for debaters who were allergic to cats, although how he could detect these allergies was a secret he kept to himself. While Pip was doing tricks and seeking to prove his wondercatness, Stripe was comfortably watching, sitting on someone's lap, preferably someone allergic, and enjoying the show with the rest of us.

One of the things that makes humans human is their desire to connect with other creatures. We bring pets into our houses and treat them like one of the family. And when one of them passes on, we're sad. But happy, too, to have enjoyed all that wonderful company, and that connecting to a life not our own, a life not even like our own. Stripe was, almost from the beginning, inevitably referred to as Good Old Stripe. The only thing he was missing? The one thing a seven-year-old didn't seem to care about after the initial introduction: stripes.

Consult the relevant philosophers

That brilliant line is one of the Cardinal Virtues of writing a good case. I sort of sloughed it last week when I was going through meeting odds and ends, treading water so to speak, but its relevance was clear last night. In the demo round of Senor Matt v NoShow, one of these professors used some Nozick analysis on the individual to underly the concept of treating people equally, and the other professor sort of made something up. The Nozick seemed a lot more convincing for some reason. I mean, I'm not particularly a fan of Nozick, and I'm certainly not a fan of the authority of famous people saying it so it must be true, but either of these seems to trump pulling it out of the top of one's head. But that's just me.

The round was interesting enough personally, in that my flowing skills have really degenerated. Or maybe it's that my handwriting has degenerated. I've got to work on this more. I'll hit the floor at Scarsdale, at least, with great urging of the debaters not only to talk slowly, but if they wouldn't mind, to come to the back of the room and write it down while they're talking. That should be a big hit.

Meanwhile, I think we need a new Hardware Engineer. Last night we had no room, and the engineer turned out to be an imagineer (he'd imagined that he'd signed up for Scarsdale, for instance, despite any evidence of his doing so). I consulted with the Captains Emeritus (or, I guess, Captains Emerita, it's been a long time since I took Latin) and they made a great suggestion for next year that I'll almost definitely follow. Picking the HE is the most difficult job of judging, truth to tell. Anyone can brainstorm a topic. But picking a Hardware Engineer? That takes skill.

Which reminds me. No doubt there's a new resolution floating around today. I'm looking forward to it. Those of you who stumbled upon the great controversy at Ripon (the University of Wisconsin has banned pornographic snow scultpures) know that things can get pretty dicey in the cold country. And those of you who watched the Commander-in-Chief addressing the country last night know that things can also get pretty dicey inside the Beltway. I don't know about you, but I sleep better at night knowing that Bush is in the Oval Office. I mean, do we really want this guy roaming the streets?

The best wine comes in old bottles

I just sent in the Scarsdale registration. We've got a pretty full contingent, I think, and I'm looking forward to it. Last year the tab room was colder than a penguin's be-hind, but I'm trusing that the Scarswegians have paid their heating bill since then, and that every word we say won't be frozen in midair.

A call came in that I need to go meet with the District over budgeting next week. I had been warned about this; it's a result of all the chicanery in the Roslyn district, where apparently some school administrators took the district to the cleaners for umpty-ump and a half dollars, got caught, and as a result caused ripples throughout the state. Whatever. I can't imagine any accounting system that wouldn't show that the money I spend is less than the money the school gives us, and that it's all going to legitimate debate outlets. I mean, we've been pretty tightfisted ever since we sold back the team Harleys. Those used to be the days, everyone on the team arriving on their Hogs at Lakeland or Monticello, the wind blowing through our hair (all right, blowing through their hair), outracing the cops at two a.m. driving back from NFA... Ah, the glory days. We had a fleet of twenty motorcycles, some of them practically brand new. We sold them all to a dealer and got enough money to send two Speecho-Americans to Harvard, provided they didn't mind sleeping on the T. Oh, how the mighty fell!

I keep forgetting that someone from Eastchester is expecting some sort of seminar and demos at Scarsdale. I trust they'll remind me as we get closer. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I'll figure out something.

And O'C is sending me this barrage of emails telling me that I'm over the hill. He wants to have all Big Bronx rounds in the future judged by AARP members or something, and he has me at the head of the codger line. We'll all be judging with pencils in one hand, ear trumpets precariously balanced in the other. Aaargh! I'm not old, I'm vintage.

This oughta hold 'em

"This" is the second LDEP missive. As I suggest in it, I don't think that I would vote for all these things myself, but there's none I'm dead set against. We'll see if the momentum continues. At the point at which this grinds to a screeching halt, that'll be the end of it, I'm guessing.

One nice thing about WTF is that if one does have the odd debater off in the jungles chasing baboons, one can read about the hunt minute-by-minute, thanks to O'C and the Universal Intergalactic Wireless card the gents at HQ bought for him. Emcee seems to have enjoyed Atlanta a little bit. And just when I thought he was about to go over to the dark Pffft side. Then again, he had been making noises about using Putnam, which is Emcee's Swiss Army evidence. He's used it on every resolution from community standards to Re-elect Bush! It never fails him.

BTW, O'C insists that I have some sort of vast readership of this blog, which would be very saddening if it were true. People could be out planting potatoes or reading Kant, and instead, they're reading this? I don't believe it. Aside from that one you-know-who who shall remain nameless, but if I knew how to put spyware on your machine, I'd be staring at you through the chips 24/7, you spalpeen!

Tomorrow night I've set up a demo round at the school that will allow us to finally see NoShow in action, vs MT, who was running non-citizens' right to bear arms, if I'm not mistaken (and the scary part is, he wasn't even running it for the non-citizen resolution). That should be quite the entertainment, and it will get us over the hump till the new rez arrives.

The latest on the Bump date move is that it's pretty likely to get green-lighted. I should hear soon. You'll know when I know (except for you, you spalpeen; I refuse tell you, ever, no matter how many boxes of Leonidas chocolates you send to my house).

States, again, on a Saturday, no less

This is a continuation of my dialogue with Bro John. His message was written with some personal asides that need not be repeated, so I'll just give my responses. It should be clear enough.

-----

[There is a chestnut that goes around that, somehow, States rewards bad debaters.]

One clarification. I strongly disbelieve that bad
debaters win States; I never meant to give that
impression. To the contrary, one must be very good to
do well at States. I agree with you there. There's
noting "illegitimate" about this win. Anyone in the
know looking at the winner lists over the last few
years would agree.

I do feel, however, that plenty of other good people
aren't on those lists. One inarguable reason is that
they don't come in the first place. Fixing that may be
beyond anything immediate we can do. But taking some
preliminary steps might help in the long run.

[BJ suggested that, if we used upperclassmen, they would somehow be second-tier, because all the good ones would be in the competition.]

So what to do about judging? Well, I disagree that we
would be bringing in a lesser caliber person if we
brought in upperclassmen; why aren't they competing
themselves if they're so good, you asked. There are
plenty of high quality upperclassmen who don't compete
themselves at the tournament, for lots of reasons. I
know that I've always got a bunch. Some of them just
have senioritis and haven't felt like preparing for
yet another tournament so late in their career. What I
see here by using them as judges would be a stepping
process: we create a better pool of judges for the
underclassmen, which allows us to (somehow) improve
the pool of the varsity. NFL awards kids points for
judging because there's a good reason for them to sit
at the back of the room.

[He mentioned some of the notorious incidents that give student judging a bad name.]

Honestly, I find that plenty
of kid judges are, in fact, stinkers, but at least
they're experienced stinkers. And at MHL we now have
strict rules to prevent what we can call those rap
incidents: any judge found guilty of same must provide
us with the names of the teams that he or she wishes
to forfeit out of the tournament. That is, if you
cover 2 policy or 4 LD kids, and we have to pull you
from the judging pool because of inappropriate
behaviour, you need to take the teams you're covering
with you. I announce this rule at the beginning of
every meeting, and suggest that judges planning on
screwing up should discuss it with their coaches now
to select the names of the forfeiting teams so that
there's no confusion later on. And they know we'll
enforce it. And incidents have disappeared. (For that
matter, we also have a rule that, if your cell phone
rings, and you're debating, it's an automatic forfeit.
That opens a few eyes when I announce it!).

But that brings us to the bigger issue, which is the
judges of the varsity. So let's assume that we've
allowed underclass judging (and again, I can't imagine
the body of LD coaches disagreeing with this, given
that it is already the norm), then what do we do about
the adults. Well, first of all, there's now fewer of
them. Now coaches won't have to rely on less than
trained individuals, or at least will rely on fewer of
them. That's a start.

I'm a firm believer in lay judges, but I also believe
they need to know what they're watching. You make good
points about blaming judges for losses, but that's not
what I'm talking about. The real problem is judges who
are totally clueless (and I blame the coaches and the
kids for that). If you watch a tennis game for the
first time, and don't know that each player gets two
attempts to get the ball served over the net, you'll
judge the match quite differently than if you do
possess that information. Now to begin with, we have
to rely on the coaches (or kids) to vouch for and
train their parents, but what if they don't, or can't?
Well, we can do two things. First, we provide a NYSFL
How-to-Judge-LD brochure. Post it on the website, and
give it out at registration. (There's no reason not to
provide how-to's on other stuff, too; I love the CFL
speech how-to guide.) Second, we train at the
tournament. We provide a half hour presentation for
all varsity judges before the tournament. That way
even if they haven't read what we've given them, we
still get to talk to them. This may be a little
ungainly, but the results would be to everyone's
benefit. It's not much, but it's something.

[I had suggested hiring judges, but BJ wisely pointed out that in my LDEP diatribe I was striking out against college judges. He also claimed it would be a major undertaking, and everyone was already up to the old eyeballs.]

As for hires, you have hoisted me on my own petard
with that one, because we could be bringing in the
people I'm warning us against! But would we? What if
the hiring was through the participating schools? That
is, while I might be less than interested in [name any
10 you want] the stinkers that think Baudrillard isn't
a fruitcake, what of
Chaminade/Regis/Stuyvesant/Hunter/HenHud/Monticello/Scarsdale/Albany
alums? Restrict the pool to NYS former debaters. Hire
through the coaches. That is, I go to Joe Vaughan and
ask him to bring extra judges (or something along
these lines, I'm thinking out loud here) and NYSFL
pays for them. They are, in that case, products of the
system, chosen by reliable coaches (and I only listed
the schools with big programs, but it should include
any school in the league). You would visibly raise the
level of judging by bringing in experienced former
varsity debaters who, for the most part, would have no
particular axes to grind (or who I wouldn't want to
grind with my axe!). Make it invisible to the coaches
being asked to bring the extras, or provide them with
some tangible benefit, and you remove some of the onus
of acquiring these judges in the first place. But
whatever is done, I think the presence of such judges
would be highly regarded by all.

As for rating judges, I'm constantly torn on this one.
Usually I rate them myself when I tab, because I know
everyone, but that just allows me my personal bias.
Any tabroom rating is personal bias. At Bump I was
going to try ratings from the schools providing the
judges, but never got to implement it because I
cancelled the tournament. So maybe you go with what I
think was an LDEP suggestion, namely, all-random
judging. If your pool is better trained and includes
those alumni above, a student ought to be able to pick
up any given ballot. But allow a small number of
strikes. I honestly have nothing against strikes, and
from my tabroom perspective I've seen them used a lot
lately. Inevitably a handful of judges, the ones who
are notoriously pig-headed, are the ones who get
struck. Bad news travels fast. It happened at
Lexington, Bump and Bronx. A bazillion judges, but
only about 8 or 9 people struck to death. From the
debaters' point of view, it does allow them to remove
someone who has dropped them for the last four years;
when I was regularly judging there were people I
couldn't pick up ever, and I hated myself for it, and
they hated me for it more. I can understand why they
might like to block me; it would be an act of
self-preservation in the competition, rather than an
attempt to move LD further off the cliff.

This whole move to change the judging is predicated on
the assumption that it would improve the tournament
and make it more attractive to competitors. As you
say, word gets out, and the buzz against States is
persistent. And there is a real problem underlying the
buzz (which is, I agree, out of proportion to the
problem). Ignoring the buzz doesn't make it go away,
and probably exacerbates the problem. We have an
opportunity to provide an exemplar LD tournament, or
not. Why wouldn't we do the former?

[He talked about why we have the generous regionals tournaments.]

As for the whole regionals thing vs top competition, I
can't make a strong argument either way because I
don't feel strongly either way. My hope would be that
if you attracted the strongest competitors in the
state, that would be good; there is nothing about the
regionals process that discourages them that I know
of. Regionals would allow less strong debaters enter a
big state tournament they might not otherwise attend,
and that's not a bad thing. But the better the
tournament is perceived to be, the better it is, in
their minds, to attend.

My guess is that taking even a small number of steps
in aid of what I've been suggesting would be perceived
as a big move on the part of NYSFL. I certainly
perceived the organization as monolithic and
uninterested in the community it serves: you've
already put paid to that (and I've made sure that, as
much as I can, everyone knows it, just as I told
people I had issues in the first place—you've been
greatly responsive and helpful). I don't know of
anyone who doesn't want a great state finals. We don't
have a great state finals now. There are improvements
that can be made. If we demonstrate a desire to make
them, we immediately improve the entire operation.
Obviously the one thing I think would trump all is the
underclassmen judging; some of the other suggestions
might help too.

[If you're really clever you'll notice I never volunteered to do any work. I'd be happy to do so, but I do not want this to look as if I am in any way interested in running things in the league. My complaints are being made because I believe they will get a hearing, not because I believe we need new people running things. There's nothing wrong with the work these folks do, and they do plenty of it. I just want them to do it differently.]

[And it may be that I really am starting to believe that LD just might be going over the cliff, and that now is the time to do something about it, that has me fingering so many pies all of a sudden. But then again, empty bloviating is a bit pointless. I'll get a new LDEP thing up shortly, plus the great novice proposal, which I just began outlining. I've got to get all this stuff moving before golf season! It was 50 degrees today. Goodbye, TOC, hello Fore.]

Lighten up, Dude!

It's been an interesting week. I'm still getting email practically busting the old virtual mailbox thanks to LDEP. Still no rousing rebuttals, although a few cavils plus some different little peccadillos bothering others of the assembled multitude. As I said, I'll try to sort it out this weekend.

Somehow in all of this, I forgot to point out that in my once-a-semester trip to the debate mailbox last week, I managed to pick up, along with the usual copies of Rostrum bound together by plastic tape so strong no amount of postal sabotage could ever separate them, a Christmas card. Hey, man. Happy Holidays, as they say in Secularia. And guess who it was from? Why, my buddies at WTF, of course. Needless to say, I was taken aback, and then some. Whoa, said I to myself, and I was going to buy them a tie or a sweater or something really useful, and then it just slipped my mind... Sorry guys. You all have a happy new year and whatnot. Now that the website has practically granulated itself out of existence, you've gotta wonder what's going on there at Hell in a Handbasket. Then again, they aren't the first souls to screw up a site. My home planet has been through about two thousand websites before finally getting it right, plus about two thousand web designers and web marketers and all manner of job descriptions beginning with web. So a false step or two by amateurs (meant literally and not as a pejorative) is understandable. O'C says I should buzz HIAH HQ immediately to set them straight. Sure. I know they're waiting for my call. But then again, they did send me that nice card... Na'ah. Forget about it. I'll send them the sweater I should have sent them in the first place.

I need to revise the podcast list over there on the right. At the moment I'm evaluating Penn Jillette. I like him in many situations, but I'm not quite sure how they're cutting the podcast. Apparently he has a commercial radio show in LV and they just grab some piece at random. If it were a little more directed... And I got tired of the Supreme Court Watch whining about Alito. Not that I became enamored of Sammy the A or anything, but a little whining goes a long way. I'd be more interested in analysis of cases as they're presented, the way NPR does it (Go, Nina T!). I'll keep the subscription for after-the-inevitable and see what happens then. TWIT, Coaster.com and Leonard Lopate remain my main favorites, depending on my mood. Maybe I'll start podcasting this blog. That would be a hit. It's bad enough you're ruining your eyesite reading it; imagine if you had to listen to it.

And speaking of ruining one's senses, I've finally heard from the Nostrumite again after lo these many weeks. His blog had stopped for some reason, even though he wasn't even writing it anymore, and I didn't have a chance to catch up with him over the holidays, and he never showed at Bigle X (or more to the point, we were never in the same building at the same time), so I assumed there was lots of news to report. But there isn't. The lad is in a state of permanent get-me-to-the-birthery-on-time what with Odelie entering her third trimester, but the TWHS team hasn't been disbanded, the school hasn't gone into lockdown, everyone is still on the team that was on the team, but what has happened is that the Mite has felt that too much time was spent creating the aura of having a forensics team rather than having a forensics team (and I have to admit, I didn't like the look in his eye when he said that to me, even though it was in an email). So he has clamped down on everything but working on cases and research. He's even making everyone do Pffft before the school year ends, although he's not too happy about the Feb topic because, as he puts it, this one really requires work. Oy. I know the feeling. Most of us prefer to argue whether b-ball players should have to wear long pants. Anyhow, the Mite does say that he may allow the team back online soon, but told me not to hold my breath. So, I won't. And he wouldn't give me even a clue as to what names they might have chosen for the Son (or Daughter) of Mite. Maybe we should offer a prize for the best suggestion. A crappy prize. A really good crappy prize (if you can wade through the oxymoron of it all). Start sending in those cards and letters now!

Who gets to decide the purposes of LD?

Scott poses a core question. It's worth looking at.

An activity like LD is created for a reason. We all seem to accept the mythology that LD was created to provide an alternative to policy, which had become too parochial. Certainly policy today bears no relationship to policy in the 60s, when I had a short debate career. We had a shoebox of index cards for evidence, and we talked like normal people. Nowadays, a shoebox of evidence and a normal speaking style will get you laughted out of Declamation! Policy had, obviously, evolved between when I did it at the point LD was created. Even removing a value judgment from the mix, it's easy to see that LD as proposed was different enough intrinsically from policy (one-person, underlying propositions of value) to distinguish the two activities.

Regardless of whether LD was created to "correct" policy or simply augment it as a choice on the forensics menu, it had a definition different from policy, in that the enactment of policy wasn't the point. Simple enough.

I was not in on LD at the beginning, but I have been in on LD for about half its lifespan. So I've seen whatever has happened, if anything, in the 90s and 00s. I am limited by my own experience, of course, but I have gotten around a bit, so I think I have a fairly decent sense of where we are. So let's get back to the question, who gets to decide the purposes of LD?

There are a number of forces involved in any academic activity like debate. There is the force of the educational goal of the activity, for one. There are educational goals in wrestling just like there are educational goals in LD; they are different goals, but they are presumably good and reasonable ones, or else we would eliminate the activity from the school menu. The educational goals of LD are tied into forensics in general: teaching students public speaking, of course, mastering the preparation of materials, doing research, etc. These will shift a bit depending on which forensic activity we're talking about;there's a lot more research in Policy than in Duo, but a lot more emphasis on presentation in Duo than in Policy. But wherever the emphasis, the educational goals of any forensic activity are relatively clearcut.

Another force involved is the force of competitiveness. When competition is thrown into the mix, it has an effect. And it has different effects on different people. Students actually in the competition probably want to win, and focus on winning. Coaches may or may not focus on winning; they certainly have more choice in the matter than students. Some coaches may have pressure from their schools to present a winning record or a wall of trophies, and there may be career self-preservation involved, or at the very least, team preservation. That gets complicated.

Another force is the students themselves as the entity on the ground. Unless an activity is absolutely rigidly defined, and LD certainly isn't, definitions become what you want to use as definitions. You make them up as you go along. What I mean is, at some point the students doing the debating pick and choose what they like and don't like, for whatever reasons, and as a group they make the activity into that thing by pursuing that thing. LD, for instance, and I think this is true of all forensics, is remarkably social. Everyone from all the teams not only knows everyone else, but they all hang out together. Something tells me that when the Hen Hud football team is scheduled against the Scarsdale football team, they don't ride together on the same bus, eat at the same restaurant, and hang out together during halftime. Forensics doesn't have to be social; it could be much more competition-based, us versus them.But it isn't. I, for one, like that.

There are other forces as well. The force of authority, for instance. If you make rules of any sort, and people follow them, you have that force. NFL has a strong force of authority. CFL does too. TOC does, but for different reasons than NFL or CFL. Even regional leagues like MHL have some force of authority. For that matter, anyone running an individual tournament has the force of authority over that tournament. How any of these authorities use that force determines to a great degree that authority's success or failure. If I create some cockamamie tournament that no one comes to, my authority over it was complete, but my effect on LD was a bust. If I create a tournament that is attractive to a large number of people, the reverse is true. How I mold Bump, in other words, is a measure of what I like or don't like in debate, and attendance is the measure of how well I've chosen among those likes and dislikes. I didn't offer MJP, but I did offer strikes. I hired as large a pool of extra judges as I could. I went to six rounds. I was making specific choices about the nature of LD with each of those decisions I made. Those choices, and Bump itself, would have a lot smaller effect than the choices made by NFL, obviously. But still, a team chooses which tournaments to attend by how the tournament makes those choices. Anyone running a tournament plays into the dialectic of what debate is or should be.

Other forces, without going into any detail, are the coaches, the judges, the parents, the school administrations, etc., that is, anyone who touches this activity, with varying degrees of effect.

So we have all these forces at work, all of them forging what the activity will be. The thing is, however, I don't think that all these forces are of equal merit. This is not a marketplace where the forces of, shall we say, LD economics work however they work, and the end result is whatever those forces make it. But I have seen an argument of this sort made, that LD should become whatever the LDers decide it should be, some combination of the students and the competition and the judges, and if it evolves into a fairly complex and swift competition addressing cutting edge theory, that is what it should be because that is what those forces have made it. I would agree if we were talking about, say, scientific progress. I would like to think that science is the result of trial and error and scientists testing things and what scientists say is science fact is, indeed, science fact. The marketplace of ideas applies to science, in other words, is I guess is what I'm saying. I believe in the dialectic applied to a lot of things. Throw all the ideas into the hopper and may the best idea win. There's plenty of places where that makes sense.

But I don't believe that an academic activity, or at least this academic activity, ought to be allowed to evolve via the design, intentional or unintentional, of the students. I don't necessarily believe that the educators will always make the best decisions, or that they can't be patently wrong, but nevertheless, as LD is an academic activity, taught at schools, by schools, for schools, paid for by schools, put down on resumes by students at schools (i.e., high schools) trying to get into other schools (i.e., colleges), educators should hold all the trump cards. It's a poor educator indeed who doesn't have an ear to the ground to know that there's good new stuff always out there that ought to be incorporated into the activity (e.g., that certain modern theorists have something to offer high school students who need not be locked into Locke or ground down by the same old Mill-stone in all their cases), but I would leave it to the educators to ultimately make that decision. They are just better able to do it than the students. Any of us who have actually lived through university study of postmodernism, to use a relevant line of analysis, are probably better equipped to discuss it than some high school junior who saw "Simulacra and Simulation" flash by in "The Matrix" and who suddenly thinks it holds the key to the universe. (Although as I've said many times, my biggest beef with LD isn't with pomo per se, because I think pomo falls on its own lack of merit when debated.)

So teachers ought to get to choose the curriculum, in other words. That's what we train them to do, and what we pay them to do. We should no more allow the students to determine the curriculum in LD than we would in mathematics. Good educators need to listen to the students, especially in a forensics activity devoted to communication, but ultimately, yeah, educators get to decide the purposes of LD. And if they choose wrongly? Personally, I think all the forces at work will correct for that. What I see as the problems now are caused by the educators NOT taking control where they should. I don't blame one student, or one college kid who just read Derrida. I see the educators shaking their heads and tut-tutting, but I don't see them doing anything, even in areas where there's virtually universal agreement. Some seem more willing to dump the activity and try something else like PF than to stand and fight for LD (which I personally think is the best version of debate we have). And what a lot of people in the community (and here I'm talking about some of the students and college folk) seem to miss is that, in our present economy, forensics is hanging by the proverbial thread. Without strong support of parents and administrations, programs just die, simple as that. We need to keep the activity relevant (if you'll allow me a value-packed word) if we wish to keep it alive. We need to keep parents involved in it if we wish them to drive and judge and chaperone. We need to have demo rounds that our principals can walk away from with a spring in their step rather than rock in their craw. We need to have an activity that colleges look at as having molded great potential students and not a bunch of isolated intellectuals. We need to have an activity I can teach to novices, for pete's sake! After all, there are thousands of novices in the activity every year, versus about 27 national circuit folk. Why would the styles and content of the 27 dictate the needs of the thousands?

The one argument that concerned educators who have been in this activity for a long time continue to make is that LD is becoming policy, not in its intrinsic styles and content, but in its support from the schools, and in its potential for the future. In the northeast, policy continues to die the death. Aside from the UDL community, every year we have fewer schools with policy competitors, few trained policy coaches, and fewer people showing up at policy tournaments. I await the demise of policy at 3 schools within 30 miles of me over the next couple of years, and I'd be happy to put money on all three of them. And once they're gone, they won't come back. The argument of the LD coaches comparing policy to LD is that LD will, soon enough, follow these policy teams into oblivion, and that there was a time when the policy coaches could have grabbed control and brought policy back and saved it. They didn't. And it's a shame. With great power comes great responsibility. If the power of authority rests with the educators, so does the responsibility for saving the activity. I am, despite my hare-brained portfolio, one of the educators. It is my responsibility to do what I can, while I can. If I fail, so be it. If I don't act, I deserve the consequences.

So, in a word, it's people like me, rightly or wrongly, who get to decide the purposes of LD.

And ain't that a kick in the head?