Spain, Part One

Everybody probably has their own approach to vacations. Ours is generally urban: we like cities, and we like visiting new cities (or revisiting old favorite cities). To keep things a little interesting, we’ll throw in a little countryside every few days for variety. Some people like to go sit on the beach for two weeks; I can sit on the beach for, easily, two minutes before going totally insane. Given that the Day Job is fairly filled with reading books that most people save for the beach, I’ve already got that part of the deal covered. I don’t need yet another [insert name of popular fiction author here] on the proverbial two weeks off. I do read, of course, on vacation, but always stuff that I don’t normally get to, like SF or classics, or need some time for. Over the last few weeks it was Snow Crash (too didactic, the exposition overwhelms the action), Anansi Boys (better than I expected), The Longest Journey (a disappointing early Forster), and Dewey’s Art as Experience (which I am still working through). So it’s not that I don’t read on vacation, but I don’t want to spend all day doing it. I can get that the rest of the year, and get paid for it. (I know: it’s a dream job. I don’t disagree.)

The preferred day in one of these vacation cities begins with a lollygagging morning, getting up as late as possible, which for someone trained by decades of waking at 6:00 a.m. is, maybe, 9:00, I’ll take what I can get. Usually we’re on the road around 10 or so, never later than 11. This works well in countries that don’t have breakfast, like Spain. You get up, you infuse some coffee and maybe something little but deviously sweet, you go about some business, you maybe infuse some more coffee, you wrap up your business, then at around 2:00, you eat lunch. Our business these mornings tends to be of the intellectual nature. I love art, and I love great museums, but I appreciate them best when my brain is at its peak, first thing in the day. So on the average day, the first thing we do is take in a museum, or something similarly cultural. To some, this would be the kiss of death, analogous to my feelings about lying on the beach. Chacun a son gout, as no one ever says on the Iberian peninsula.

Spain, as you probably know, still adheres to a siesta schedule. From 2:00 to 5:00 almost everything shuts down, and everybody goes and eats. From everything I had read in advance, one ought to plan one’s big meal for this stretch, and that proved to be good advice. After putting away a large amount of food, we’d stumble back to the hotel for a real siesta. That I liked. I’ve always liked naps, since the day I was born. I take them whenever I can. Come into a tab room at about 2:30 on a Saturday, then you’d better tiptoe and keep it quite, bub. Anyhow, after recharging one’s consciousness, one heads out to walk the streets with every other person on the peninsula, with maybe a stop or two for dessert or tapas, until, FINALLY, it’s time for dinner. Now, I’ve been to countries where they eat late, but this place takes the cake. Unless you went to a restaurant you wouldn’t want to go to, you couldn’t find anywhere that had anyone in it before 9:00. We could stretch it to then, or maybe a little later, but not much beyond that. I gather people really eat at 11:00, and I will vouch that when we were leaving restaurants around that time there were usually people waiting to be seated. Good grief! And why aren’t any of these restaurants open in my home town so the Sailors and I would have somewhere to go on our return from tournaments?

As a general postprandial rule, after more strolling about amidst the teeming multitudes, we’d make it back to the hotel room and have lights out around 1:00 a.m. I have to admit, it did not take long to get the personal system in accord with this schedule. We certainly didn’t always have those big lunch meals (especially in the beginning, when we were still getting used to the place), but we certainly did eat.

As I think of them, more details on some of this stuff to come—the nature of the art and architecture, the nature of the people, the nature of the languages (note plural), the nature of the food, general observances, etc. You may or may not come away thinking Spain is a place for you to prioritize visiting at some point (if you haven’t already). We had a great time, though. You can draw your own personal conclusions over the next few entries.

I'd settle for a comb-over; the writing stuff; vintage whines; Bullpup hostelry; plus the odd et of the cetera persuasion

I will have a bunch to say on Spain shortly, because it’s an interesting place worth talking about. Of course, I think that almost every place is an interesting place worth talking about, but some are more interesting than others. As a case in point, we are talking about the one country in the world where the mullet is not merely not dead, but in fact rules. As my personal mullet days are far behind me (see my photo on the right if you need some explanation for this), you can imagine how this might have affected me. Anyhow, we’ll do detail travel stuff over the next few weeks. What else is there at season’s end, right?

Wrong.

One thing I noticed in that WTF thread on disclosure (to which, btw, I’ve posted my notes, at O’C’s request, which means I can never look at the thread again) was that someone commented that virtually no $ircuit debaters were writing their own cases, a point which no one challenged. I’m shocked—shocked!—to hear it. One of the favorite rounds I ever judged was of a young debater running for the first time a case his college-student coach had written for him, which he understood practically none of. When we discussed it later in the day, he said that as he ran it more often, he was starting to get the hang of it. This particular debater went on to great debate fame and fortune, and as far as I’m concerned, he is still some schmuck running a case he was handed that he didn’t understand, and his coach was more of a puppeteer than a coach. I wonder if they do this in, say, high school baseball. Do the coaches throw the pitches for the kids? Or do they bat for them, because they’ll be better batters than the kids would be? I’m rather religious on this subject. I certainly believe in working with my team to develop arguments on a resolution, usually as many arguments as we can think of. We talk about them all, then they go off and work out the ones they like to make cases out of. They will, therefore, learn to think about the material and then learn to write about the material. I do edit it, but as you know, I’m a professional editor, and one thing we do if we’re doing our job well is get the writers to do the writing; we don’t do it for them. I point out areas in a case that I think need work, and occasionally suggest what that work should be in some detail. I do not do it for them. And I certainly don’t tell them what arguments to run. Quite honestly, I think that if I wrote cases, they’d be pretty good. Hell, I’m a published author and a publishing veteran and relatively intelligent: how bad would I be? But I’m sorry, you couldn’t pay me to write a case for a student. Oh well, one person’s religion is another person’s bull-ogna, and vice versa. If I were to convert, and somehow get the money for travel, it is not inconceivable that I could field a lot more $ircuit debaters. But as I’ve said over the years, if TOC didn’t exist, I wouldn’t have invented it. Time has not eroded my views on this subject.

On the other hand, I like CatNats for a variety of reasons, always, however, excluding their topics. CP’s recent blog (it’s flogged on the Feed, which you should be following religiously if you really consider yourself a serious member of the VCA) explains that in fact the Cats solicit topics from the membership at the beginning of the year, and offers some possible reasons why no one seems to know about this. He will make some effort next year to publicize this solicitation, and perhaps eliminate all the whining about the topic (a breed of whine of which I am a connoisseur). Kudos! In the race for forensic sainthood, CP has, as you know, already achieved my venerable and beatified states for his work in normalizing the college universe. If he can tame the Catholics as well, he’ll be shaking Mother Teresa’s hand in heaven any day now (metaphorically speaking).

But then, on the other other hand, not long ago Chris sent out a notice about Yale explaining that the hotels were filling up—nay, in many cases, had filled up—and that we’d all better get our reservation acts together. So I started calling my usual venue for the last few years, the La Quinta, and got nothing but no replies and leave-a-message messages. I talked to the desk, and they promised action, and then I went to Spain thinking that maybe action would ensue in my absence, but I returned to no action whatsoever, and started calling again, and FINALLY got a human being who told me they were sold out. Feh! So I liked La Quinta because of the shuttle, but I figured at a cheaper price I could bring a bus and driver and get an extra room, so my next step was a cheapo Days Inn up the road, and I talked to someone there of the totally useless persuasion who took some information and told me that the manager would call me back in an hour. Unfortunately, this was not an hour by my watch, so I decided to bite the bullet and go for the Clarion, which also has a shuttle but is a shot or two more expensive. Lo and behold, the person who answered the phone (yes, there was a person who answered the phone) was professional and seemed to have some knowledge of and experience in the hotel business. Working with her was a pleasure and I am now happy to say that my rooms are secure. But oy, what a pain in the patoot. No wonder I’m not writing cases for my team. I’m too busy making (or failing to make) hotel reservations.

And finally, in that catching-up category, tonight we’re going to see Indiana Jones. For the first time. O’C tells me he saw it 38 times just last Sunday alone. Maybe I’m never going to catch up. Thank goodness.

Liberte, egalite, et...some...other te.

There is one basic theme that underlies most good LD topics. And there are two ways to look at it. First, it is the conflict of the sphere of the individual against the sphere of the community. What rights and privileges and responsibilities are those of each, and what do we do when they are in conflict? When they are not in conflict, then neither matters much objectively. I don’t care what some other individual does if it only affects that individual, or at least I shouldn’t. Live and let live, in other words. (There are those who don’t respect this claim of privacy, usually for religious morality reasons, but we are not looking at religious ethics but social ethics, if for no other reason than that religion does not make for good debate while social engineering is quite arguable.) Similarly, if society as a whole somehow takes actions that don’t affect individuals—maybe things like when the Senate declares the National Muffin—it is of no consequence objectively (aside from the time wasted when they could be solving the Iran/Iraq/Africa/Whatever situation).

The second way to look at the basic theme of the good LD topics is liberty versus equality. One of the pieces I posted to the Coachean Feed recently asserted that in the democratic universe at large, individuals prioritize the latter over the former, and that may indeed be true. Perhaps the concept of justice is merely the attempt to balance the two: when liberty and equality are in balance, we have justice. For that matter, when the individual and the community are in balance, we have justice. Same thing, albeit through different mechanisms of thinking. Justice, for once, however, is not the manifest derivative value of the resolution, so maybe we can put that aside.

Like many people, I firmly believe that you need to have something to say before you start saying it*. In debate terms, that means being able to boil down your case succinctly in such a way that if I were to ask you what you are running, you could answer in one sentence that would, indeed, indicate to me what you are running. I’ve never heard any writing instructor (or almost any kind of instructor of anything) telling a student to complicate what they’re doing. Simplify. Always simplify. If you can’t boil it down, there’s something wrong somewhere. Or if you don’t have a starting point to work from, you’ve got that same something wrong problem. You can see my thoughts on this clearly in the how-to-write-a-case material on my team website. Start first with the idea, then elaborate that idea, or thesis, into a case. If you haven’t got the idea yet, keep striving for it, but don’t start typing quite yet.

The point of all this noodling is just to provide another way to look at the NatNats LD rez. While the topic is asking you about the issue within a specific arena, i.e., economics, it could not be any more clearly a conflict of liberty versus equality. Each side is asked to claim that theirs is the one to be prioritized (except of course for the schmegeggie who runs that neither should be prioritized, which, when you think about it, is a bad approach absent the fact that it tries to preempt both sides of the rez and eliminate the conflict: societies probably should prioritize one over the other, although maybe some societies, say the developing nations, need a different approach than an industrialized nation—interesting stuff that probably is beside the point). If you’re still have trouble getting your mind around the rez at this late date, then just start with that. It’s liberty versus equality. Obviously the words are (virtually) already in the resolution, but that doesn’t mean everyone sees them that clearly. For that matter, when you’re listening to your opponent in the round, make sure that this is what they are talking about too. Resolutionality is rather smiled on at NatNats (and rightly so); if your opponent is non-resolutional, you might be able to pick up a win right off of that.

And on to other things. I’ve got pictures to sort, stories to tell, motel rooms to book. Thank God I’ve got you to tell my troubles to, they being so many and varied: we should be able to get through the off-season without a scratch (especially once WTF starts sending hourly updates on the mystery meat they’re serving at the camp cafeteria et al).

*Readers of this blog may disagreed, but who needs you anyhow, you yabbo!

You show me yours and I'll show you mine

One thing I looked at as I tried to catch up with the universe’s activities in my absence was the thread over at WTF on prepping out and case disclosure. Or at least that’s how the thread seems to have started out; over its course, it’s covered many other things as well. Interesting stuff, although the thread itself, like any long and complicated discussion, has a lot of chaff to wheat your way through. Still, some thoughts.

First of all, as an aside, isn’t there something slightly wrong with the admission that a third to a half or $ircuit rounds are so fast that most of the judges don’t understand what is being said? This is ascribed as much as anything else as bad speed, rather than speed per se, and that may be true. One of the worst aspects of LD since as far back as I can remember is its rather inept cooption of various aspects of policy, and this would seem to be another example of that. I’ve watched policy breaks at TOC that I could flow, because there’s more to it than just talking fast. At any rate, I question the value of a speaking event in which the speaking is literally removed from event’s evaluative context. If an aff is going to spew at such intolerable speeds that we have to eliminate (or, excuse me, “flex”) CX so that the judge and opponent can read the cases to find out what was said, we’ve got a problem.

But the issue is prepping out and case disclosure. One needn’t be a professional mathematician to figure that a large organization will be able to scope out cases better than a small organization. If I have four or five judges and some loose coaches and whatnot, I can pretty quickly get a bead on all the major competition at an event. If I don’t have that vast backup army, I won’t be able to collect as many flows. So the advantage goes to the already advantaged, obviously. But case disclosure eliminates that advantage (or at least lessens this particular aspect of that advantage). If the goal of a debate is to argue ideas, and not win the round at any cost, then it makes sense that we would want to know that Debater A is running an aff based on such-and-such and so-and-so, or that Debater B is running a kritik based on this-or-that. We wouldn’t need the whole song and dance, of course, but enough so that every opponent goes into the room prepared for the subject matter at hand.

Aaron T sets a simple paradigm that this sort of thing can be done or not done by any tournament that wants to do it, and he will therefore do it at his. This makes sense to me. Given the number of $ircuit folks who travel down to his venue for that Octos bid, there is a logic to their being placed on as level a playing field as possible. And I’m sure the mechanics of the thing, as he’ll do it, will make sense; it’s funny how many people seem to want to quibble about implementation, as if this hasn’t been going on one way or another in Policy for the last thousand years. At the MHL, Kurt was kicking around not only disclosure but limiting novices to a handful of case approaches, simply to train them to figure out what the hell they were doing in the round, without having to worry about prepping out on an infinite number of case possibilities. The point was education, not victory; that would come later.

Most LD venues I’m a part of, I think, wouldn’t really lend themselves to AT’s approach, because the events are informed by other interests. That is, certainly a lot of people go to Yale or Lex or Bump looking for a bid, but the vast number of people are there for something else. The judge pools are good, but they’re not mostly $ircuit. People travel from around the country to the Texas tournaments and to Emory and Glenbrooks, and the field numbers at those tournaments are limited, and it’s a pretty special situation, and it’s a major financial investment. You can send exactly 2 LDers to Emory, by plane, for about the same price as sending 5 varsity LDers to Lexington, plus a herd of your novices, by bus. We tend to be looking for a different debate experience with these events. Not that they’re better or worse, but they’re different. To expect that all tournaments must aim at the same goals would be a rather limited view of the activity, regardless of what goals you would want those to be.

So I wouldn’t suggest that all tournaments be somehow “required” to have a disclosure process, but that some tournaments might require disclosure makes sense to me, especially if they are at the top tier of national events. A more parochial tournament might wish to do this too, and more power to them, but it’s not my particular cup of tea, and I certainly can’t imagine it at a novice or JV level. It probably does make sense that all round robins set up a disclosure process, however, given the nature of those events, their competitors and their judge pools.

So as far as disclosure goes, I’m all for it, where it makes sense. The element of surprise is the only thing gained by running something for which your opponent is unprepared. That’s not debate; it’s an ambush. Even if you win the round, you haven’t done so because you’re a good debater, but because you’re a sneaky s.o.b. Where’s the glory in that? And a level playing field of disclosure makes all teams potentially equal. I can’t argue with that either.

Do what I tell you to do, you yabbo!

There is some joy to being carded at CatNats. Of course, it would have been more fun to hear myself quoted if I had actually been sitting in judging the round, which I gather happened to O'C. There's a conflict for you. How do you evaluate somebody obtuse enough to quote you (from your blog, of all places), when on the one hand, your opinion has no warrant whatsoever, whereas on the other hand, you know you're always right? Tough call. Not the first time it's happened, actually, although usually it's some misguided novice who hasn't yet separated the wheat from the chaff rather than a national qualifier. Then again, I do understand that seven or eight people at TOCs were running flex affs, that virginity is now the standard response to Baudrillard (regardless of what Baudrillard happens to be talking about), and that 62% of the people polled on the question stated that Jon Cruz is a member of the Irish nobility. (In other breaking news, the Irish actually have a nobility?)

Anyhow, we're back from Spain. So far all I've done is sorted through the junk mail to get to the handful of good stuff, and the world does not seem to have ended, nor even come close. I'll restart the Coachean Feed shortly, mostly starting from here rather than trying to catch up, except with one or two strings I've been following, especially the series on aesthetics. I will have a lot to talk about regarding the trip, but I'll just stir it in when it makes sense to do so. Mostly it was great fun, good weather, good food, a good experience overall. The high point is that the hotel we stayed in in Madrid gave away free plastic shoehorns. I lost a shoehorn a couple of years ago, and have been waiting for something like this to happen. Which means that if you see some guy wearing loafers, it's probably me.

Next step: sorting out the photographs.

Hiatus in progress

We'll be back the end of May. And here's what O'C said when he heard we were leaving town.

The NatNat rez

Resolved: Limiting economic inequality ought to be a more important social goal than maximizing economic freedom.

Rob—Zombie? Lowe? Petrie?—asks about NatNats, and I’m happy to (marginally) comply. Of course, you won’t have Coachean Life to kick around in a day or two, as I’ll be on vacation, so I can’t wrestle this one around for day after day after day, but there’s not much we can do about that. Fortunately the topic is so elemental in LD terms that there isn’t much one has to say to have said enough.

Governments exist, at their most basic level, to do a handful of things. Most importantly, and universally, they establish order among individuals. Governments create and enforce rules, which establish order. John Locke talks eloquently about doing this in what has become the democratic model, with representative government enacting legislation, an executive enforcing the legislation, and a judiciary interpreting the legislation. But it is done as well by a totalitarian government. Rules are set, people follow them. The difference is that in the totalitarian state, the people have no say in setting the rules.

Secondly, governments provide a synergistic ability to perform what individuals cannot perform. Governments, by their nature and size, are able to provide infrastructures, for example, things like roads or reservoirs, that serve their citizens beyond what the citizens could have done for themselves. Once humans develop large societies from small tribal groups, a relatively new phenomenon in the history of our species, the individual no longer is able to provide for self and family. Distances become greater, specializations become common, and government steps in to provide what we once provided for ourselves. Pre-societal humans, if they wanted water, plopped down next to a river. Nowadays we turn on the faucet. In other words, governments provide services to individuals that they cannot provide for themselves.

Thirdly, and again derived from nature and size, governments are able to deal meaningfully with other governments. We’ve talked about sovereignty in the past, and that subject is not relevant here (but feel free to listen to the Parsippany Ritz podcast if you’re interested).

And that would be about it. Establishing order, providing organization beyond the individual level and dealing with other comparable polities are what governments universally do, one way or the other, well or poorly, regardless of the type of government.

The NatNat rez looks mostly to the second area of what a government does. One government differs from another government in many ways, including how it provides services to individuals that they cannot provide for themselves, and in what services it provides. And it is important to keep in mind that any government runs on the support of the individuals it governs, in the form of taxes. Money goes in, money comes out. Again, differences exist: a thieving dictator’s handling of the money is different from a democratic socialist state’s handling of the money. In any case, only a government can “limit economic equality.” So we have to be looking at describing the nature of governments in the rez.

Resolved: Limiting economic inequality ought to be a more important social goal than maximizing economic freedom.

The most extreme limiting of economic inequality would be a Marxist system in which there is no such thing as private property. The most extreme maximizing of economic freedom would be a laissez-faire state with no regulations on capital whatsoever. Historically, Marx and his followers were responding to the extant situation, where big forces of capital did whatever they wanted without controls, and pocketed all the profits. The idea of eliminating private property would, of course, theoretically eliminate the big forces of capital, but would also eliminate one of the cornerstones of the West’s received wisdom of Rationalism. Property, many believed, was an inalienable right. The conflict, in other words, was clear.

The real world has gone a great way since Marx’s day in resolving this conflict. On the one hand, the purely capitalistic libertarian state is now subject to government regulation at many levels. On the other hand, the urge to hold private property has proven hard to suppress, and purely Marxist governments do not really exist, and the legacy of totalitarian states devolving out of communism may have demonstrated in the laboratory that these governments never could exist. That, of course, is moot. Still, many socialist ideas have been incorporated into many otherwise capitalistic states, most noticeably in the area of health care, even in the US. So the deep background here, which is what we’ve discussed so far, is that the extremes have for all intents and purposes existed, and we’ve evolved into some middle ground. But that middle ground is vast. Take a look at these ratings: http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/countries.cfm This is the Heritage Foundation’s index of economic freedom. The amount of income tax is pretty telling from country to country. You could do worse that diving into these figures with notepad in hand.

But we haven’t really addressed the resolution yet, that “limiting economic inequality ought to be a more important social goal than maximizing economic freedom.” If we are going to limit economic inequality, we are presumably going to have either a redistribution of wealth after the fact, i.e., the richer subsidizing the poorer to some extent, or we are going to have a distribution of the wealth before the fact, i.e., the public possession of the wealth and the elimination of private property. One could easily run a completely pro-communist aff, in other words, and be resolutional. I don’t think that is a terrible debate: far from it, the study of capitalism v. communism is very enlightening, and it wasn’t all that long ago that, indeed, cap v. com was literally the NatNat topic. This could be seen as a variation on the theme.

As I say, however, to some extent history has already resolved the cap v com debate, and while just because something happened doesn’t make that something inevitable, I wouldn’t want to be defending communism after looking at those heritage.org figures. Freedom, it would seem, equates pretty straightforwardly with free capitalism. And freedom is an awfully strong benefit of any system, not to mention a system that allows you to keep most of your wealth. An attractive picture, unless you’re destitute in Hong Kong. Or, a couple of notches down, the US.

So what other debate is there? Well, the first thing I thought of when I heard this topic was not cap v com but Rawls v Nozick. (I very recently posted a Feed piece on these two yabbos that NatNatters ought to take a look at.) The chief question that Rawls poses, the way I see it, is going back to that second purpose of government discussed above, that governments provide services to individuals that they cannot provide for themselves. Given that, in our complex modern society, we seem to be unavoidably faced with a class of economically deprived, for whatever reason, what responsibility, if any, does government, and by association tax-paying individuals who make up that government, have to that underclass? There’s an awful lot of leeway in answering this question, and that leeway could make for a good debate. Rawls tells us that we need to create a society that provides a certain minimum benefit for the least privileged. That is, as we “create” a society, we must fashion it in such a way that the least privileged are getting what they consider to be a fair deal. To achieve this end, we must do our societal creating behind a veil of ignorance: we cannot know our own position in the society, as that might corrupt our decision-making. Not knowing our position will lead us to this minimum benefit for the least privileged position, because for all we know, the least privileged might be us. Needless to say, if we were absolutely fair and incorruptible, we would come up with exactly the same decisions; the veil of ignorance is merely an insurance policy against the fact that, unfortunately, we are not angels.

The end result of Rawls’s thinking is a fairly robust support system for the underclass, and his ideas are associated with liberalism, i.e., a large government system running a lot of programs for the public weal. This kind of system can be seen as prioritizing limiting inequality. Keep in mind that the logic of Rawls is not manifest, and you just can’t walk into a round, say “veil of ignorance” and walk away with the ballot. The V of I for Rawls is a philosophical determining mechanism, not an end in itself. But reading the first hundred pages or so of Theory of Justice should be enough to get your head straight on what the man was talking about. After these pages he goes into the math; I, for one, was not equipped to go with him.

On the other hand is not really Nozick, as the aforementioned article explains, but conceptually we think of it as Nozickian. Ayn Rand, of all people, supported charity for the poor, as a sort of noblesse oblige aspect of the possession of wealth. The botto line of libertarianism is not, therefore, letting the poor rot. Rand is as much a libertarian as Nozick, and not that I’d ever suggest anyone torture themselves by reading Rand’s prose, I will say that once you get her drift, you will understand the neg. The position opposite to limiting economic inequality is one in which the government does not directly take on the responsibility of seeing to its underclass. This is not done out of meanness or parsimony, but out of the belief that the best system for the growth of capital is the system that least attempts to control that growth. Short of crippling monopolies or unfair business practices, including the unfair treatment of labor, the belief is that, since everyone is equal and has an equal opportunity to create their own wealth, it should be their private business to do so, and the government’s job is to keep away from it. In other words, the government is obligated to be laissez faire, because the laissez faire system will result in the most wealth for the most people. The very idea that wealth is obtainable to one and all acts as an incentive, as compared to the welfare-ish Rawls state, where the dole acts as a disincentive. Look, for instance, to the unemployment situation in the UK. At the point where unemployment is about as attractive as low-level employment, you run a large risk of finding a large group who opt out. Why work when you don’t have to?

I think the very interesting ideas of capitalism are in this construct. Despite the fact that I am a dyed-in-the-wool liberal—I know, you’re shocked, shocked to hear it—I think there is reasonableness and potential in that small government, every man for himself idea. I mean, didn’t it work in the US? Doesn’t it potentially build the most prosperous nations, the most vivacious, the most exciting? Where is the financial excitement in the world today? Outside of China (which may be too important to posit an “outside of” argument), it’s in the freewheeling capitalist nations.

Anyhow, this just scratches the surface. And because of the wide open nature of the rez, it’s far from inclusive. It’s merely the starting point of one evening’s aimless noodling.

And now I’ve got to go get Tik (pronounced teek) out of my suitcase.

Leavin' on a j.p.; Guamacites; pre-Pups planning already?

I am now ready to pack. The goal is to bring as little as possible, so I’ve brought the smaller bag down from the attic, and done my best to keep Tik (pronounced teek) from stowing away in it, and begun laying things out. Not clothes, of course. Clothes are easy. A couple of these, a couple of those, and with any luck I won’t be arrested for disturbing the fashion peace. No, I’m thinking assorted chargers and international plug connections, games for the DS, juiced and loaded iPoddery (music, podcasts, audiobooks, video), camera (with manual, in case I want to get creative), teensy tripod for same, magazines, travel materiel, and of course, books. I’m limiting it to John Dewey on art, an early Neal Stephenson (the Baroque Cycle would mean never leaving my hotel room), and a easy-reading player to be named later (either Gaiman stories or a Jeeves novel). As you can tell, I definitely have my priorities straight. All those hours in airports and on planes require weeks of planning. An idle brain is the devil’s workshop…

Speaking of the devil’s workshop, every debate site this side of Guam (which just caucused for Obama, by the way, by a handful of votes; in other news, Guam has caucuses despite the fact that they don’t have electoral votes, and the inhabitants of the place are called Guamanians, not Guamwegians) has been posting minute-by-minute updates on the TOC. I have not bothered reposting them through the C-Feed. Enough is enough. I’m glad to see that Malis is now in their hall of fame, though. He’s a good guy, and has done some seriously clean tabbing for years now. More power to him.

Tomorrow is the last official/unofficial/you-name-it confab of whichever Sailors want to confuse Good Old “Alli” even more thoroughly before CatNats. And then we’re off the charts. After vacation I’ve got a ton of catch-up stuff that I’d like to do before the new season starts. That some of this catch-up is left over from last summer does not bode well, however, so breath should not be held. Still, I’m already thinking of Bullpups signups, and feeling that I’ll stick with the same hotel. It is off-campus, but there’s a shuttle and it’s a nice place and you don’t have to do the Street Criminal Night Obstacle Course to get to it.

I’m almost outta here!

The latest theory arg put to the test; topic envy; pre-ciao

This weekend dozens of debaters at TOC will be attempting for the first time to employ the flex aff in their competitive strategies. My prayers are with them.

Anyone who thinks I’ve been ranting too much over the CatNats topics (LD: education ought to be imbalanced; Pfffft: Native Americans ought to get off their lazy butts) might wish to compare them with the recently released NatNats topics. If you are a non-New Yorker you may not realize that, as a general rule, NatNats are quite problematic here, because they interfere with required Regents exams and/or graduation, which, if not required, is usually recommended for most high school students at the end of their fourth year. People do attend NatNats, but it is an enormous hassle, and often students just don’t bother because of that hassle. But every year it’s the same thing. Topics are released and those of us who will not be at NatNats (and yes, not even going to Las Vegas could overcome the inertia of Regents/graduation) sigh and wish we could debate those topics, or prep for them, or just touch the hem of their garments. Lucky #^$&#s! All we get is CatNats. About which I will now stop whining. (And I have continued to feed education articles to the Coachean Eaters in the audience. There’s plenty of stuff out there. Little of it is relevant to the topic, but at least it’s about education per se. Thence you shall derive your cases.)

This weekend is my final chance to get organized for my vacation. I don’t feel at all ready, but I never do until I return. I’ll be shutting down all Coachean communications, of course, for the duration. Two weeks without an internet. That I’m ready for!

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

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

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

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

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

Coachean Life begins hourly TOC updates!

The countdown to the TOC continues with—

Wait a minute. I don’t count down to TOC. And neither should you. Keep repeating: It’s just another debate tournament. It’s just another debate tournament. It’s just another debate tournament…

I’m in the processing of putting my brain into vacation mode, which is easier said than done. Most of the plans are made, except for some oddball things like day trips to Toledo, but I need to figure logistics to and from airports, find hotels on the maps (again), figure out how to pack half as much as I usually do (my daughter can travel six continents for three years with nothing but the contents of a fanny pack which, of course, she refuses to wear because, well, it’s a fanny pack), find the correct reading material (the latest Pynchon is leading at the moment, but I fear that it won’t make the cut), and generally get into the swing of things. Last night I put up the final Nostrum before the break, leaving the proceedings in the middle of the Manhattan Lodestone OriginalVaganza (All Other Vaganzas are Extra). The episode concerned a parent judge who made a tournament run about an hour late, and I remembered as I read it the real incident that led to this fictionalization. If you are a Nostrumian, I will remind you, as Jules and the Mite often did during its original presentation, making it in fact an occasional slogan, that they often referred to it as “Nostrum: based on a true story.” I just love the sound of that.

I put a link to the feed over there on the right yesterday, to put Coachean Eating more front and center. Concentrating my attention as it has, I’ve noticed that, while it has been relatively easy to come up with facts and opinions on education hither and yon, I have yet to post a story on Native Americans. If a Pfffft topic is supposed to be reflective of current events, then the Cats seem to have outdone themselves this year in getting it wrong. I was also catching up on my old Rostrums last night (I’m a couple of months behind, and just read this interview with some guy from Scarsdale who claims to be their coach) and read the Rev B.A.’s latest on the problems of PF, and, inter alia, his belief that the Cat approach (fixed sides) does nothing to solve them. Mostly, though, he talks about the judge pool as a moderation device on the activity, with which I agree, although I don’t think it’s likely any time soon that we will actually have two judges in every round, as he suggests. The way it works in real life is problematic, though. As a for instance, we have a tournament with LD, PF and Policy, a standard-issue event. Inevitably the Policy judging is so tight that every judge is judging every round, and there isn’t a lot of discretion over the proceedings other than putting all the varsity judges in the varsity pool and the novice judges in the novice pool, with, if you’re lucky, an occasional run off of the former into the latter in bubble rounds. PF judging also, for some reason, remains tight. There will be a few PF parents about, and we’ll use them as much as we can, but if the pools are small, judges get dirty fast and you quickly start importing LD judges one or two at a time, which can work wonders in terms of clean adjudication. But what happens is maybe not good. There might be one or two judges in the LD pool who are fans of PF and would prefer to be there (some of my own ex-Sailors, for instance), and I’ll do my best to accommodate as that seems a good thing for all the parties concerned. But after that, what we might be doing is siphoning off the judges from LD that the LD pool doesn’t want, thus bolstering the parochialism of LD while doing nothing to secure a lack of parochialism in PF. The siphoning is of judges who are so struck by the LD pool that there’s nowhere else for them to go, or of the LD parents who we think would be great for PF, but whose defection homogenizes the LD pool. Of course, we also throw in a few people who just happen to have team cleanliness on their side (e.g., great LD judges who were hired by the tournament and therefore able to judge everyone), but you can just do so much of that because you’re always conscious of your bubbles in LD. At TNC, for instance, we had three LD divisions, meaning fields with three sets of bubbles. There aren’t too many A judges left by the time you pair those rounds. Anyhow, my point is that, in the normal practice, we’re probably doing an okay job with the PF judge pools, a balance of all sorts of lay and non-, but the very existence of that PF pool is acting as a parochializing agent on the LD pool. And, as everyone in the VCA knows, I am a strong proponent of parent judging in LD, for all sorts of reasons. So I may be acting against my own principles when I get into the tab room.

I have no solution for this, aside from tournaments not selling PF judging (you end up with professional judges) and not overloading the field with one school (you end up with plenty of judges who can’t judge anyone, which happens all the time at our local CFL events with unlimited Regis Pffffters). In other words, strictly enforced team limits and judge requirements. But we want PF to grow, and these strictures may not be particularly nurturing.

We live in interesting times.

Either/or <> both; modern love; bowling far from alone

Jimi Mo asks the following regarding CatNats LD in a comment: “Question, are you saying that the negative strategy saying that athletics and debate [I assume he means fine arts] should be viewed as equal is illegitimate, or that its something that people ought be prepared for, or both.” The answer is, of course, both. Now, reasonably speaking, one could theoretically claim that the affirmation of the topic is that a particular aspect of education needs to be valued higher than another, and that the opposite position, and therefore the negation, is that no particular aspect of education should be valued higher than another. And if you and I were discussing this at the dinner table, this positioning of the topic might make sense. In fact, in the real world, it is pretty much inarguable that secondary education ought to balance (and support) athletics and the arts. But debate is not the real world, and it is pretty obvious that the intention of the resolution is for debaters to argue the relative merits of athletics v. fine arts, and not for debaters to be arguing a balanced education versus an imbalanced education. But, alas, that doesn’t mean that that is what will happen in the rounds. If negatives can successfully pull off this particular reading of the resolution, unless they start singing the songs from The South Park Movie in the middle of the round, it’s hard to imagine how they could lose. I’m reminded of an old regular NFL topic on economics versus protecting the environment in developing nations. As often as not, the negatives ran not their side of the dichotomy, but a recommendation of balanced development. To which there could be no successful affirmative reply other yeah, “Yeah, duh!” Unfortunately I don’t think this sort of problem is fixable by some rewording of a resolution. When you want to present two choices, you have to frame it that one side is preferable to the other, and I can’t imagine wording that excludes the prospect that neither side is preferable (or both sides are preferable). Debaters who come up with this reading of the resolution inevitably think of themselves as clever little devils, by the way. So, affirmatives need to be prepared: the CFL is filled with clever little devils.

Meanwhile, I noticed on Facebook this morning that it is my wife’s birthday. I plan to write “Happy Birthday” on her wall some time today, if I can find a moment in my otherwise busy schedule. I love this Web 2.0 world that we are living in. It takes all the work out of human interaction.

And speaking of human interaction, I love this: A friend of mine at the Day Job is out bowling last Saturday night. (What kind of friends do you have there, you might ask, if they’re all out bowling last Saturday night. I refuse to answer that question.) She’s bowling away—a strike here, a spare there, a little bag of peanuts in between. Then her husband nudges her to look over there. And in the neighboring alley—bowling away, a strike here, a spare there, a little bag of peanuts in between—is a high school student wearing a “What Would Menick Do” tee shirt. The otherwise unbridgeable gap between Day and Night is closed, and my friend at work will now pay any amount of money for a WWMD tee. I gather these are now the hottest items on eBay, other than Menick beanie babies and Menick action figures. I guess I should ask O’C, he being the biggest collectible person I know (i.e., a person who collects, not a person who is collected by others). If anyone is in the market for a Boba Menick Big Fig, it’s him.

Fortune-telling (with a WTF/TOC zing, various cultural references just to be cute, and O'C's obsession)

WTF has begun their countdown to the Tournament of Coffee. We here at CL will be battening down the hatches waiting for the storm to pass, confident in our belief that a balloon is only as big as the amount of hot air used to inflate it.

(Wow. That’s a really good metaphor, and I think I made it up all by my lonesome. I’m impressed.)

So, no TOCs here, bub. And my house is empty again, so I have no further Non-F stories to relate (much to the chagrin of Dan Cook’s father). And I have no interest in getting involved in discussing the self-immolation process known the Democratic Party primaries, not to mention that my recent comment on Miley Cyrus’s autobiography has preemptively used up my allowance of stories on that particular subject (thank God). So it would seem that I am excluded from the blogosphere completely. What else is there left to talk about?

You misunderestimate me, Mr. Bond. (Which reminds me of the best Bond exchange of all time, from Goldfinger. “Do you expect me to talk?” “No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.”)

(But first of all, I awoke Saturday morning to a message from O’C that, while suffering from debate withdrawal, he had just purchased 7 new Star Wars figures. If you’re wondering, they were: Bubba Fett (football-playing clone), Brudda Fett (Hawaiian ukulele-playing clone), Bobo Fett (bourgeois bohemian clone), Bugger Fett (you-don’t-want-to-know-what-kind-of clone), Baba au Fett (rum-soaked clone), Feta Fett (Greek salad-eating clone), and Fetid Fett (debater-who-forgot-to-pack-clean-underwear clone). Needless to say, this knowledge made my day. We all handle debate withdrawal in our own fashion.)

I listened this morning to a Philosophy Bites interview with Thomas Pink. (If you Google him you first have to sort through a lot of haberdashery.) The subject was free will. An argument was proposed to prove the lack thereof by proving that all actions are predestined, and it goes something like this. All statements of fact are either true or false. The statement “You are going to take a walk this afternoon” is therefore either true or false. Your walk, or lack thereof, is a fait accompli before it takes place (or doesn’t take place). Your walk, or lack thereof, is therefore predestined. Now the only way you can attack this conclusion is, apparently, to attack the single premise, that all statements of fact are either true or false, but that is, needless to say, a mug’s game.

Of course, to me, this whole discussion is a mug’s game. Even though I can accept both the logic and the premise, I know that the conclusion is nonsense, and that the whole thing is mere wordplay. If I were a more sophisticated philosopher, perhaps I could successfully rebut the wordplay, but I can’t. And worse, as an unsophisticated post-contemporary philosopher, I find the entire exercise specious at best. Have these obviously intelligent people nothing to do with their brains than to waste them on conundrums? Were they out of Wii consoles at the local electronics shop that week? Because I see little difference between a video game and this kind of analysis, except that at least the Wii gives you a little pseudo-exercise to go along with your killing of time.

I know. My yabbo flag is now waving in all directions.

I equate much of the nonsense in pomo writing with this sort of thinking. One isolates an idea that makes sense if you squint at it just right, and then tear off and build a whole universe of conclusions based on that idea, and that entire universe of conclusions looks like pure idiocy to anyone who doesn’t buy into that particular brand of squinting. And those non-squinters tend to be the majority of the world at large. Not to suggest that the majority is right merely because they have the numbers, but that accepted processes of thought and analysis should be able to withstand all changes of thinker and analyst. Science is like that. Something is either a proven fact, or it is not. One can hypothesize till the cows come home on conclusions to be drawn from the proven fact, but until one’s hypotheses themselves become proven fact, by the same rigorous process that led to the original proven fact, they are not accepted as true. Wouldst that philosophy, or what passes for philosophy, worked the same way.

And if post-contemporary philosophy is correct, it does. The mind and body and the universe do not work one way for philosophers and some other way for physicists/biologists/psychologists. The former create metaphors for what the latter prove empirically. And some day in the distant future the two groups will no longer be disparate. Unfortunately, I doubt if any of us will live long enough to see that happen. [Sigh...]

Trade this, you yabbo; nail me to the nearest VW; My Dinner with Non-F

So now Palmer wants to trade with me. He wants the CatNat LD topic, and in return, I get the CatNat Pfffft topic. Nope, not good enough. He needs to throw in one Original Orator, two Duo teams and six Declaimers to be named at a later date before we can even begin to deal.

The nerve of that guy!

Curiously enough, I just posted on the feed a list of artists and their projects that is, well, germane (?) to the issue of what is art. Take a look at it, or if you’re not an Eater (i.e., a follower of the feed, which is akin to being a member of the VCA but sort of like the mother’s auxiliary), go Google the name Chris Burden. But you’ve been warned. We’ll start evaluating art according to our new prescriptive definition in the near future. Whether this will help with CatNats I highly doubt, but then again, if you have a native understanding of what art is, it won’t hurt when it comes time to argue about it.

Speaking of arguing, sometimes you just have to recognize that you shouldn’t because you’re just not going to get anywhere. One of my houseguests last night, during a discussion of the CatNat LD topic (I recommend that my students discuss these things at the dinner table, because God knows I certainly do it myself), equated athletics with stupidity. More specifically, she claimed that all college athletes (and she’s a professor, so she knows a bunch of them) are stupid, or at least the vast majority. The problem with this statement though, even if it were true, is that it requires one to provide a link between athletics and stupidity. Now if you made that statement, and I asked you to provide the link, i.e., the inherent aspect of athletics that made people stupid, or the inherent aspect of stupidity that made people into athletes, you would either provide it or admit that there wasn’t one. But that’s because you’re a forensician. Non-Fs don’t get it. They see ample examples of the truth of a conclusion, and therefore do not feel a need to challenge the logic of the conclusion: they do not recognize that the conclusion requires a direct causal link, without which one has subscribed to a logical fallacy, the truth of the matter or lack thereof notwithstanding. Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, if I’m not mistaken. But then again, I’m no logician. And I’m not a person to argue with, unless you’re actually willing to argue absent a commitment to a position. If you actually believe what you are saying, then discussing something controversial with you won’t be much fun because you’ve already committed to your conclusion. True debaters are like true gamblers. As a true gambler will wager on which bird will be the first to take off from the branch merely for the sake of having a bet on the table, the true debater will argue anything for the sake of arguing it. Content is beside the point. But to be honest, I do disagree with the athletes=stupid claim. Everyone knows it’s the fine arts people who are stupid.

Toward a workable definition of art

Traveling the path toward understanding art is a fairly treacherous business. Once upon a time the only thing one needed to know was how representative of nature a work of art was to be able to evaluate that work. At least this is what, I gather, Plato and Aristotle say on the subject. One recalls HAL, the computer in 2001, remarking on the drawing the astronaut has done by saying that it is a very good likeness. A very good likeness would make something a very good work of art, from a Platonic, Aristotelian or a binary AI point of view. It is, if nothing else, an objective yardstick. The more real, or the more realistic, and therefore the closer to nature, the better the art. Unfortunately, even without stretching our brains too much, we are able to discard this particular art theory no later than the middle of the 19th Century, and perhaps a lot earlier (e.g., Turner). But to pick a most famous moment, around the time the Americans were fighting their Civil War, a handful of French artists were inventing Impressionism, at which point there is no question, at least in our 21st Century minds, that art need not be realistic/natural to be good.

Our problem is that, as we flash forward to the present from the 19th Century, we get progressively more complicated in trying to analyze the works that are presented as art by artists. The artists refuse to cooperate in our investigations by going off in one unified direction, and we get all sorts of movements and styles, and we have to contend, for instance, with the rather realistic Hopper and the rather fanciful Picasso who, if we were to hang their works on the gallery walls by chronological order, are right next to one another (they were born a year apart). How do we create an overarching explanation for everything we see at a museum of modern or contemporary art? How do we evaluate everything we see at these museums?

For a long time now I’ve been wrestling with aesthetics. Needless to say, I have found it impossible to find an aesthetic explanation, much less an aesthetic appeal, to much of what seems to inarguably be art, if one is to accept the word of artists that their work should be claimed as such. One could subscribe to Baudrillard’s conspiracy of art (which is reasonable enough) and say that art has become what the co-conspirator manufacturers (artists) and profiteers (art dealers, curators and critics) claim it is, regardless of any objective evaluation. But even if that is true, it is not as if there is any competing claim to art that trumps it. Art is that stuff all around us that is put forth as art. Our challenge is to understand it, not to disregard it.

Given the vast panorama of what is called art, it may be too much (or too little) to attempt to define it by what it is. It is certainly impossible to evaluate it merely by what it is. Let’s say we went with a simplistic definition that art is the creation of an object with no practical purpose. I don’t particularly like this definition, and it’s awfully close to the definition that art is the creation of an object that is a work of art, which even more obviously begs the question. I don’t necessarily believe that art is objects, or that all art must have no practical purpose. For that matter, one could question the human inherency in the creation of art: if a computer, or an elephant, paints a painting, is the result not art by definition? In any case, one can toss together various collections of words more or less like this definition, leading inevitably to both arguable premises and arguable conclusions. These arguments would allow us to waste much ink on art theory, intelligibly in some cases, unintelligibly in many others, and in the end we would be not much closer than where we started. Not that I don’t enjoy reading (some) art theory, mind you. I just don’t believe it holds the solution we’re looking for.

The good news is, there is no law that forces us to define art descriptively in order to understand it. Rather than taking a deontological approach, therefore, I will take a consequentialist approach. I will explain art not from a categorical perspective of its having certain aspects, but rather from its results. Art, I would say, is any created work that enhances human experience. Of course, there is an immediate problem with this, because one could easily say that the practice of medicine enhances human experience, but that’s why I include the word created, or better yet, use the phrase created work. We need to get a sense of somebody—an artist—doing something creative, of manufacturing something, whatever it might be, for the purpose of that thing being a work of art. My guess is that there is a better way to put this, but I don’t think the sense is unclear. On the other side of the sentence is the consequence: the work enhances human experience. Here I would mean it enchances the beholder and not the creator, and that art can not be measured by its intentions alone; i.e., if it has no effect, it is therefore a failed piece of art, however lofty the intentions of the artist who created it. Enhance may be a dicey word, human experience may be an overly general phrase, but again, I think we have a clear statement. Art is any created work that enhances human experience. That leaves only the determination of what we mean by enhancing human experience.

I think we can look to Aristotle here on what he says about drama, in that its goals are to provide emotional catharsis for the viewer, and to expand the knowledge of the viewer about the world. This is a simple emotion/intellect breakdown. I would say that enhancing human experience is exactly what Aristotle says, either providing an emotional arena outside of the self, or educating the mind from outside the self, or both. Either is okay, both is better. If Art is any created work that enhances human experience than it either heightens our emotional sensitivity (or gives it a thorough cleaning via a good solid workout) or it expands our knowledge of life, or both. I can now measure the success of art (or at least its relative success, vis-à-vis myself as the beholder) by its effect on my mind or my soul.

There’s more to it than this, but this is a start. Questions arise about meanings that are not the intention of the artist, for instance, but that’s a fine point for argumentation and not a deal-breaker. This definition, if you will, allows us to look at the most luscious Monet or the most improbable Smithson pile of dirt, and evaluate their effects and therefore accept at least that both may be art, even though they do radically different things. I mean, say what you will about the pile of dirt, it does make you think (if only about the conspiracy of art, but that’s beside the point). A book that makes you think about a lot of things would, in this analysis, be more of a work of art than a book that merely entertains you. You could indeed suggest that the book that is merely entertainment is no work of art at all, and perhaps make comparable arguments about paintings of lighthouses that are sold by the pound at tourist resorts. Of course, even the success of these low level attempts at art are tangible, if an emotional reaction (excitement at reading a good adventure story, a sigh over a pretty landscape) is all that is required (and perhaps it is). The more I work with this definition, prescriptive though it may be instead of a more satisfyingly descriptive approach, the more I like it. It could be improved in its actual words, but the point is, I think, on the money.

My understanding is that the only mammals used as feed at Disney's Animal Kingdom are mice. If the O.B. had only known...

I have just heard that Miley Cyrus is writing her memoirs. Obviously, our work here is done.

Of course, this is the sort of news I am pointedly not adding to the Coachean Feed. There you would most recently have read a think piece on the 8th Amendment (lots of that floating around these days), some internet privacy news, US immigration statistics, the happiness of gun owners (there’s another amendment for you), and a bit of this and that on education (for the CatNattians in the audience). In other words, the sort of stuff debaters need to have in their brains in general, all of it desirable rather than feeling like just more homework. My original goal as a coach was to civilize the adolescents with whom I came in contact. This proving to be beyond my capabilities, I have resorted to attempting to marginally educate them beyond their class work. So far results have been, well, comme ci, comme ca. You can test this yourself. Do you feel any smarter for your connection with me? No? Well, maybe our work here isn’t done yet after all.

I will point out one link on the feed that will baffle all but the most dedicated Coacheans: Disneyland has banned the taking of photographs in the parking lot! I’m not making this up. This may be the biggest setback for postmodernism since the release of The Matrix Revolutions.

Anyhow, the feed matures over time, becoming less newsy and more far-flung as I discover new blogs and websites through mostly serendipity (or, more likely, a willingness to follow wherever the hypertext takes me). Google does the rest, bless its little heart. I’m hoping that by next season it will be quite the little resource (the feed, that is, not Google). You, of course, can get in on the ground floor. Free! Act now! Our Prices are INSANE!!!

Last night I posted episode 71 of Nostrum, which strikes me as an awful lot of Nostrums. Not having a meeting did free up a little time, although I do still have a lot of debate chores before I run out of seasonal steam (not to mention getting “G.O.A.” ready for Minnesota, you betcha). I also have prep chores for my vacation in a couple of weeks. It’s coming up quicker than I expected, but I think most of it’s pinned down as much as it’s going to be. The goal will be to spend as few Euros as possible, given that each one is worth 172 American dollars plus your firstborn. What I should really be doing is traveling to somewhere the dollar still has some value. Do you think there is such a place, Toto? It’s not a place you can get to by a car, or through Expedia…

A little CatNats, including the abstention negative, with a side of logic

The new Loquitur podcast does a good job of pointing out that there are serious problems with American education by establishing a forecast for future global employment needs and pointing out that all the good jobs are going to go somewhere else. If we measure education for its ability to provide a useful, gainfully employed citizenry into the marketplace—a perfectly good method of measuring, I’d say—then we are up the creek without a paddle. The problem with this thesis is, the false dichotomy of arts/athletics is beside the point. US education needs to concentrate on math and sciences in a world where most of the high-paying jobs require math and sciences. Neither an extra hour on the violin or on the weight-lifting equipment is going to help much. Of course, this particular thesis does miss the point that not ALL future jobs will be for engineers, but I wouldn’t have much problem arguing that US education in social sciences and reading/writing is also absolutely pathetic. Given the high percentage of debate students, presumably at the top of their classes, who are semi-illiterate, well, there you are. I thank my lucky stars on a regular basis that I don’t have to deal with whoever it is who is at the bottom of their classes. Unfortunately, however, after this rather interesting program which I listened to this morning, one is no closer to solving the Mystery of the Missing Conflict (AKA the CatNat topic) than when one started, aside from adding a global perspective to one’s approach, if one is so inclined. Again, this is no fault of the Loquiturians, who have nothing to discuss but the topics they are given. Anyone going to CatNats should at least give it a listen.

The one thing that serious CatNatters need to be prepared for is what I’ll call the abstention negative. While I don’t usually discuss tactics and strategy here, as I don’t want you blaming me when you go down in flames (I’ve already got a team that handles that perfectly well), there is one prospect afoot that you need to be prepared for if you’re not already. Keep in mind that while plenty of great debaters qualify for CatNats, a surprising number of not-so-great debaters also qualify in regions where they don’t have much debate but nonetheless they have a quota of debaters they can send. These less experienced debaters, stifled by the obliqueness of the topic, might be inclined to abstain and run a negative that says not that athletics ought to be valued higher, but that neither should be valued higher, that they are both equally important (or unimportant) and should be treated identically insofar as the dealing of funds (the demonstration of valuing) is concerned. This being CatNats, you are not allowed to hit these debaters over the head with a frying pan. Worse, given the lay nature of the audience, there may be those in the back seats who buy this approach as a viable strategy. You, of course, know better, in that this removes all aff ground and is therefore unacceptable. But you’ll need a better defense than that when the time comes. I’m not guaranteeing that the time will definitely come, but be prepared. More unusual things have happened.

By the way, isn’t this an example of the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent:

1. Since everyone in possession of nuclear weapons is too sane to ever use them, no one will ever use a nuclear weapon.
2. No one has ever used a nuclear weapon.
3. Therefore, everyone in possession of nuclear weapons is too sane to ever use them.

I could be wrong on that, as I’m no logician. But I heard this a couple of times last weekend (and of course it does stem from Baudrillardian type analysis, but that’s beside the point). In any case, I do not subscribe to the argument that just because something has not happened, that somehow that proves that it will never happen. In support of my position, I offer just one word: virginity.

My, my, my. I am seldom no debate-oriented. I must have awoken on the right side of bed this morning.

Greener CatNat grass; 6 Rounds of Spring RR lead to all the news that isn't fit to print

CP finds the CatNat Pffft topic sadly wanting, while when I first saw it I was envious, at least in light of its LD cousin. I guess it is a bit one-sided, but then again, at least it’s not a statement of obvious fact, so there’s some leeway. Given that the LD topic is a statement of oblivious fact, I’m still inclined to prefer his over mine. Of course, at this point I’m only helping “Good Old Alli” prep, and don’t have to actually listen to any rounds, so the harm to myself will be minimal at worst.

Saturday was the Columbia Spring RR under the auspices of They Who Fill Up Every Inch of the Ballot, and it was a nicely run little event on a beautiful spring Saturday. Given that I haven’t judged anything except the odd round hither and yon lately, I was a little apprehensive, but I remembered what I was doing quickly enough. That the first person I heard was running Derrida (I kid you not) and almost had me screaming for the door, but things settled down quickly after that. Lots of good debaters doing a good job, essentially. You can’t complain about having to judge something like that.

The high point of the event was schmoozing with O’C, who updated me on all the latest gossip. Although I’ve been sworn to secrecy, that probably doesn’t include writing it up here, so let me share it now with you. So-and-so, of all people, is randier than some really random thing, which amazes me no end because I can’t imagine how So-and-so even gets standing room at the back of the bleachers, much less batting cleanup and hitting a home run. Whoda thunkit. Meanwhile, You-know-who has a history of naughtiness that would make even Hillary Clinton blanch, and I had thought You-know-who was a pillar of the community; shows you how observant I am. O’C refused to go into too much detail on Whatshername or Thingamabob in front of [Insert Varying First Name Here] Chernick, or maybe it was the other way around and the truth of the matter was that he refused to go into too much detail in front of me, but what I heard was enough to get me through the rest of the day with my ears having turned bright red. We did establish that, at least so far, not a hint of shame has ever been connected with the Menick name in the forensics community, however. I’m thinking of changing my slogan to “Scandal-free since 1996.” That should appeal to the parents, at least.

We did have to leave the RR early, since at some point Robbie realized that he was Jewish and that there was a seder to attend. Craig had popped up and rode back with us, so we shared opinions on every movie ever made, all of which Craig has seen in the last six months. Aside from having to deal with the runoff traffic from the Pope’s visit (he was on the highway that intersected with ours for a while), a pleasant time was had by all. Follow this up with a nice dinner and an episode of ST:TNG (in honor of spending time with O’C that day), and you have pretty much the perfect way to spend a spring day (especially if you throw in that ice cream cone dipped in chocolate at lunch time, the quintessential sushi dessert).

And so, aside from another bit of brain power on CatNats, the debate year is a done deal.

Alternate NCFL PF topics revealed

In light of CP's comments about the NCFL topic next month, I have been fortunate in uncovering the topics that were not accepted by the selection committee. You can judge for yourself if they're any better than the actual topic.

Resolved: Obama should concede the nomination to Hillary Clinton because she’s a girl.

Resolved: George W. Bush is a schmuck.

Resolved: Public Forum should adapt value and criterion standards like LD, and then ignore them.

Resolved: If indigenous people don’t want to be poor, they should learn to deal Blackjack.

Resolved: The United States should bomb the hell out of the enemy in Iraq, once we figure out who the enemy is.

Resolved: Dick Cheney makes the Antichrist look like Kermit the Frog.

Resolved: Osama bin-Laden is living in Bermuda under the assumed name of Barney bin-Rubble.

Resolved: The Supreme Court should lighten up a little bit and apply the death penalty to anyone who wants it for any reason whatsoever.

Resolved: The 4th Amendment means just what it says it means, whatever that is.

Resolved: Wouldn’t we all be better off if we just waited until Chelsea hits her thirty-fifth birthday?

Resolved: Russia gets really cold in the winter.

Resolved: George W. Bush is still a schmuck.

Resolved: If God had wanted man to fly, He would have bought him a plane ticket.

Resolved: Tiger Woods is to golf what Jon Cruz is to pomp.

Resolved: Matt Thomas is the father of Dan Cook.

Resolved: Anyone who inadvertently gives my name to Facebook to sign up for yet another application should have their nose eliminated.

Resolved: Scrabulous should accept the non-words I put in but not the non-words anyone else puts in.

Resolved: Steve Jobs should get some bright colors into his wardrobe.

Resolved: George W. Bush is becoming more of a schmuck with every passing minute.

Resolved: John McCain isn’t all that old. Yet.

Resolved: Red states and blue states should come together and make purple states.

Resolved: Chetan should be issued larger ballots because he already completely fills up the ones that are merely eight by eleven.

Resolved: Debaters should at least try to read Chetan’s eight-by-eleven ballots.

Resolved: In order to co-exist with the Catholic Forensic League, the NFL should rename itself the Non-Catholic Forensic League.

Resolved: Consarn it! #%$(%*& Bush is even schmuckier than I thought!

Resolved: Resolution writers for the CFL should get a 15% raise.

(I want to thank His Holiness for passing these along to me during his otherwise busy schedule visiting our fair nation—JM)

Breaking news: Tiaras replace trophies in Northeast!

In his latest blog post, CP, the twenty-first century’s answer to Bert Parks, indirectly raises an interesting question. He talks about the decline of policy, and the potential and/or real decline of LD due to their inherent parochialism, making points with which I pretty much agree. But the question arises, given the general belief that PF is a good thing, why aren’t we getting ignition throughout the region? I see some schools who have had little or no debate but lots of speech tentatively taking to it as debate gateway, and one or two outfits have almost completely refitted their operations to participate (e.g. Regis), but most schools continue to field PF teams as, at best, afterthoughts.

Is a puzzlement.

The CatNat Pffft topic is: Resolved: That the US Government should increase social services for indigenous peoples in America. This is a fascinating subject, both in a historical and contemporary sense. The CatNat LD topic is: Resolved: That secondary education in America should value the fine arts over athletics. This is a topic of no value whatsoever, since it concerns a nonexistent dichotomy which, even if it were true would be peripheral to the real concerns of contemporary education. And these are not unique examples (although one might suggest that, traditionally, the CatNat topic is almost always the worst of the year, so it might be unfair to mention this particular example, but just because the Pope is in town doesn’t give them a bye, if you know what I mean, although given his infallibility, it might be better if he came up with the resolutions in the future). Most of the time the Pfffters get to argue interesting stuff at the level of that stuff, while most of the time LDers, if they don’t duck the resolutions altogether, work the same material over and over with little variation. This is not an indictment of the resolution choosing process, but merely an observation based on resolutions that reflect the nature of their arenas.

There is an interesting line in one of the actual indictments of LD abroad at the moment, in which coaches who consider the content of a resolution to have value are disdained as missing the point (as opposed to concentrating on analytic thinking). Being one of that number, maybe that’s why I’m attracted to PF, because every month there’s a new topic and you actually have to understand the topic and learn about it and then debate it. Quelle horror, as they would say in France if they didn’t speak French very well. But maybe that kind of coachean thinking is in the minority, and since everyone else in LD would prefer to argue the prestandards, the poststandards and the londoneveningstandards rather than what henceforth will be called the standardstandards, there is little interest in PF’s resolution churning because, ultimately, resolutions are the thing to be gotten around, not explored. In other words, we have an entrenched coaching establishment that supports whatever it is already doing, however it is doing it, rather than looking at new activities and evaluating them objectively and using them for whatever value they may possess. (And I agree with all that CP says about lay judging, which adds another dimension to this altogether.)

Let me put it this way. As I’ve always said, all forensics are valuable at the secondary school level. The learning required to interpret a poem is as valuable as the learning required to argue the rights of indigenous peoples in America is as valuable as the learning required to argue foreign policy with a partner is as valuable as the learning required to present a case for or against social actions as just or unjust is as valuable as the learning required to write and present an original oratory on, well, whatever, etc., etc., etc. You get my point. While students may be at an age where a fanboy attachment to their own activity blinds them to the values of other activities (and I don’t necessarily believe that that is true, but I pose it for the ensuing juxtaposition), coaches have no such biological excuse. And if a coach can’t offer everything, and there may be good reasons for this (e.g., in my neck of the woods, speech events are here and debate events are there, mostly, and I can not usually be both here and there, although I have occasionally been both hither and yon), then coaches must closely look at what they are doing and wonder if they should think about changing it. CP poses this dilemma for the Polician community. If may also become applicable to the LD community, as he suggests. I continue to question the death of LD, though, and to wonder if it may just be the isolation of the national $ircuit—a group which is blatheringly loud on the debatosphere and therefore hard to ignore—from the general flow of the LD community, which goes about its business as always, perhaps occasionally longing to go to Kentucky on Derby weekend, but not willing to sell soul, heart, and mind to do so. Or to redefine educational values to include the smallest number.

In any case, my team is small, but I will continue to attempt to get some traction in PF. Wait’ll next year! I honestly don’t care if my students do PF or LD, although I do believe that, given my own experience with the latter, we’re better off at least starting novices with LD and evolving into PF on a person by person basis, i.e., learning the boot camp basics in the area where we have lots of rounds available, and my own curriculum in place. But still, the void in the region remains. At the MHLs we get at best a handful of Pffffters despite our best efforts. A mere three schools fielded Pffffters at the Northeast Championships. Until we get more people out there week after week, learning by doing, we’re just not going to be establishing the activity as a viable alternative to, or welcome partner with, the existing debate activities. And that would be too bad.

Quelle dolorous, as those poor illiterate French folks might say.