Abnormal Means

I have noticed more and more a slip­page of the con­cep­tion both aff and neg teams have of proper “disad uniquness” on the cur­rent high school topic. Lots of 1ACs seem to have a “your disad is non-unique” pre-empt card that indi­cates more space launches are com­ing now. This is prob­a­bly good for “going into space bad” dis­ads (debris, ozone deple­tion, et al.). How­ever, this becomes prob­lem­atic when­ever the neg reads “rela­tions” dis­ads (US-Indian rela­tions, EU cred, etc.). While the pre­dic­tion that mul­ti­ple other launches are tak­ing place in the sta­tus quo does (arguably) non-unique most launch dis­ads that are miss­ing a key unique inter­nal link (like, “only increas­ing SBSP cre­ates the cas­cade effect” or some­thing) it doesn’t really address the war­rant on most rela­tions dis­ads that “sub­stan­tial” increases in US space pro­grams would be per­ceived by inter­na­tional actors as a threat.

This becomes really dis­heart­en­ing when­ever the 2AC response num­ber 1 on  the rela­tions disad is “launches now, risk of link is zero”… How can you fix this?

1.) Find bet­ter disad pre-empt evi­dence.  Per­haps some­thing like “more domes­tic launches now, this has trig­gered all inter­na­tional per­cep­tions”. Although this is still a lit­tle sketchy because good teams will often spin this in the block as proof that “the brink is NOW”.

2.) Find a cut spe­cific link turns about your plan for each major country/region on this topic. So that you have a float­ing disad take out to “launch” dis­ads in the 1AC, you addi­tion­ally have plan spe­cific link turns to “rela­tions” dis­ads that are most likely bet­ter than the generic link evi­dence most 1NCs are reading.

I hope every­one is enjoy­ing win­ter break, I am.

Jason

Two update cards today,

First, a really great (long) arti­cle about the rise of China. Even if this isn’t a geopo­lit­i­cal sce­nario you argue, worth a read.

Sec­ond, an inter­est­ing wrin­kle in the US stance toward UFOs… In case you are one of those zany kids talkin’ about space people.

The two final poten­tial top­ics for next year are:

Resolved: The United States fed­eral gov­ern­ment should sub­stan­tially increase its trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture invest­ment in the United States.

Resolved: The United States fed­eral gov­ern­ment should sub­stan­tially increase its legal pro­tec­tion of eco­nomic migrants in the United States.

Thoughts?

One key take away from my judg­ing exper­icne this week­end, K debaters not only need to know “their” the­o­rist of choice, but also how that author inter­acts with other pop­u­lar k authors.

For exam­ple, I judged a “K on K” round in which the aff was advo­cat­ing a Fou­cauldian cri­tique of power rela­tions, and the neg responded with a counter advo­cacy pred­i­cated on the writ­ings of Hardt and Negri. By the end of the round, each side essen­tially argued “our cards say we are key to power rela­tions, we win”. The debate that never hap­pend was how each cor­pus of crit­i­cal lit­er­a­ture con­ceived of what “power” is, and how that con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion dif­fered from the oppo­nents theorists…

For exam­ple, while Fou­cault sees Power as omnipresent, and multi-directional, Hardt & Negri have a some­what more bia­nary view of power (informed by more Marx­ist con­sid­er­a­tions). At any point in the debate, either side could have argued “Power is XXXX, your authors don’t assume this, we access the best inter­nal link vote XXXXX”.

If you’re like me and you enjoy read­ing back issues of now defunct debate pub­li­ca­tions when you’re try­ing to put off enter­ing judge prefs for the upcom­ing tour­na­ment, you might enjoy some of these links… Every­one else, sorry:

Cren­shaw asks, fem k legit? (sort of)

And, an answer.

A series of arti­cles on an argu­ment that I really think debaters should read in front of judges that call them­selves “tra­di­tional”. (here, also here)

A cache of old the­ory arti­cles from the DRG, includ­ing one of my all time favorite Shana­han pieces.

And, finally, Here’s an inter­est­ing read that could prob­a­bly be incor­po­rated into one of my old time debat­ing faves, the plan flaw

With per­mis­sion, I’m glad to share a excerpt from an email from Aaron Tim­mons, head debate coach at the Green­hill school. Good advice for all new judges, and all of us who stay in con­tact with our alums as they become judges:

While it is true that novice debaters engage in hyper­bole, every Mon­day post the first tour­na­ment I hear sto­ries about stu­dent judges that include:

“Her phone rang and she took the call in the mid­dle of my speech”.

“He didn’t flow but read a book dur­ing my speeches”.

“The judge was tex­ting dur­ing the whole debate”.

“The judge had head phones on dur­ing my speeches”.

“He left the room dur­ing cross ex and didn’t lis­ten to it”.

“The judge chat­ted with a friend who came in to watch the debate and seemed to lis­ten to lit­tle of what was said”.

The new one today was, “the judge said our debate was ter­ri­ble and we were bor­der­line ter­ri­ble as well”.

Many stu­dent judges have a pro­cliv­ity of giv­ing speaker points that were far too high or too low for kids in their first com­pet­i­tive debate.

At the end of the day we all need our novices for our pro­grams to be sus­tain­able. It would be great if we all could train our stu­dent judges the “do’s and don’ts of judg­ing” to make all expe­ri­ences for our young ones a good one!

Couldn’t have put it bet­ter myself (so I didn’t).

Three key take aways from this week­end at Greenhill:

1.) Qual­ity argu­ments > Speed. Even just walk­ing around the school it was supris­ing to here so many bad argu­ments spread so poorly, and so many smart argu­ments made so slow and clearly. I found by and large the bal­lots bared out my gut reaction.

2.) Pea­cocks love cashews.

3.) Good teams are work­ing between rounds. What do you do between rounds? Hang out with your friends, play online games? The best debaters can be found in a hall­ways redo­ing their last rebu­tal or recut­ting 2AC blocks to pre­pare for the next round.

Next Sat­ur­day is angel tour­na­ment week­end, more lessons to come…

This prob­a­bly non-Uniques a few arguments

This year I am going to (try) to gleen a few lessons about debate from each tour­na­ment I judge at, this week’s addi­tion is Grapevine:

The 2AC is all about strate­gic (offen­sive) debating…

Merely ‘answer­ing’ every neg­a­tive flow is not usu­ally in and of itself enough to win against good teams. Two things every 2AC must keep in mind. One, you have 8 min­utes of cards pre­sented before the neg ever stands up, exploit this. If your 1AC is prop­erly struc­tured, it should pre-empt most generic argu­ments the neg has in their tubs (lap­tops). 2ACs that con­sist entirely of new cards rarely seem to be suc­ces­full in high level rounds. Two, you are never going to win every sin­gle part of every sin­gle argu­ment. The neg has the block, you have the 1AR, I can’t do math but I under­stand the aff is going to get behind on cer­tani parts of the flow. But that’s ok, know your case and what its respec­tive strengthes and weak­nesses are, this will inform what argu­ments you MUST win, com­pared to the argu­ments the 1AR can strate­gi­cally con­cede in needed.

Then the last 24 hours have been your dream sce­nario.  Obama has announced a new pro­posal, experts say it will boost the econ­omy, and polit­i­cal cap­i­tal is key to pas­sage. omg.

If you are debat­ing this week­end and you aren’t a k team, you deserve to lose if you aren’t read­ing this pol­i­tics scenario.