tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75526012024-03-13T02:31:09.890-04:00Coachean LifeUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger437125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-53374863117651750972015-02-05T19:30:00.000-05:002015-02-05T19:30:00.289-05:00In which we dispense with at least one baroque genius
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I’m beavering away at the DJ, working on a section in a book
about good fats versus bad fats, listening to the Goldberg Variations in the
background, when someone appears at my door and asks if I’m on hold. </div>
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Sorry, Bach. It’s come to that. </div>
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Speaking of music, I was in Manhattan yesterday and saw a
big new collection of sheet music, a ukulele fake-book. That should make a nice
Christmas present for all my fellow tabbers. All they’ll need after that is
ukuleles.</div>
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For those of you (I think the exact number is 1 1/2) who only follow the
“forensics” label on coachean blog articles, this is fair warning that I am going to
stop using any labels. I only ever use one, and that’s it. If I remember
correctly, the use of labels came up when certain people (numbering exactly 1
1/2) suggested that they were only interested in coachean musings when they
were, indeed, related to coaching (pronounced co-ack-ing). Sure, said I, but
when push comes to shove, and I’ve now been pushing and shoving these labels
for a couple of years now, forensics is about it, unless I do a piece dedicated
to O’C and have to draw on the “rude” label. I’ll start (or more to the point,
stop) the labeling practice next week. </div>
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We seem to be going into the Scarswegian weekend without a
major or even a minor blizzard. My lead PFers are taking the month off for a
couple of reasons, not least among them being the weakness of the rez. We did a
practice round Tuesday, and it wasn’t promising. If you have to weigh in terms
of reducing poverty, either it does or it doesn’t, and once this question of
fact is determined, you can go out and smoke a cigar for the rest of the round.
Globalization being such a rich topic, and poverty reduction being such a rich
topic, it’s a shame we couldn’t get a nicely rounded topic on one or the other.
We do get to smoke all those cigars, though. In light of our new relationship
with our neighbors 90 miles to the south, this will probably, if nothing else,
reduce poverty in Cuba. There’s a bright side to everything. </div>
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Speaking of this
practice round, btw, I got to use my nifty new iPad keyboard, which I was
inspired to buy after seeing Bro J use his setup at Bigle X. I was very pleased
with the results. Now that you can run a real version of Excel on the machine,
well, there you are. Numbers, the Apple spreadsheet, either on the Mac or the
iPad, never really did it for me. I was raised on Excel (or to be more precise, its predecessor Lotus 1-2-3), and at any point where
I can’t use all the features I’m used to, I start writing angry letters to the
<i>Times</i>. I’m going to try doing most of my tabbing on the iPad this weekend,
meanwhile. I’m used to the 13-inch MacBook screen, but I’ve used smaller in my day
(once, years ago, way smaller, a PowerBook, the tiniest Mac ever seen). The
question is, will it matter? We’ll see. </div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-87930049839232656252015-02-04T19:30:00.000-05:002015-02-04T19:30:02.269-05:00In which we talk turkeyOr, if you're bad with commas: "In which we talk, turkey." Then again, I once had an author who wanted to meet so we could sit down and discuss turkey. Idioms and this guy weren't exactly on speaking terms.<br />
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Anyhow, O'C and CP and I have put together another The View From Tab podcast, mostly on how to decide on elimination rounds. Listen for yourself: <a href="http://theviewfromtab.blogspot.com/2015/02/how-many-are-you-breaking.html">http://theviewfromtab.blogspot.com/2015/02/how-many-are-you-breaking.html</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-1355579521886900402015-02-03T19:30:00.000-05:002015-02-03T19:30:00.133-05:00In which we address the lovelorn
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So it turns out that next Saturday, on which we will be
seeing Penn, Harvard and Berkeley all going at it, is Valentine’s Day. This had
eluded me completely, but I am told that, because of this, venues are finding
it hard to get judges. Now I’ve given this a lot of thought. Debate judges.
Valentine’s Day. Seriously, people. These two are like a bad PF resolution, in
that they really never come into conflict. There’s got to be some other reason
for the problem. So I did some research. It turns out that February 14th, in
1921, was the date that Skeezix appeared on the Wallets’ doorstep in the comic
strip “Gasoline Alley.” No wonder it’s hard to get judges that day. The scales
have lifted from my eyes.</div>
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Looking at my schedule, I realize that things are very much
going in their last innings. After Scarsdale and Penn, there’s the MHL Blowout
finale, then Lakeland, then a qualifier for CatNats and the NYSDCA
championships, and that’s about it. Of course, around March the Last Chance
Qualifier for the NYSFL appears. And then reappears, and then reappears again.
There is no dearth of last chances to get into this tournament that will, most
likely, be summarily won by all of those people who qual’d their first chance.
This is definitely part of the split personality of that state organization, which
may just be too generous. Then again, I remember once hearing someone talk
about big events, championships and the like, and how few people get to attend
them and how much fun they can be for students. Travel is broadening, right? So
why not travel a few young ‘uns once in a while, if you can afford it and if
they can qualify, according to the rules of the game, however welcoming those
rules might be? Let’s face it: I may be the wrong person to be talking about this since I never get on planes much anymore for debate
(although I have secured my NDCA reservations, which I feel obliged to attend
as a board member). I’m a stay-at-home coach. The exception is, for Sailors,
qualifying for CatNats or NDCA or the like. Which puts the ball in their court,
I guess. If you win it, I will come. Or words to that effect.</div>
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Come April, in any case, I will be pretty much done for
the year, unless we have a qualifier for CatNats. Which I probably won’t be
able to attend, as I’ll just be getting back from my early May vacation and
will have DJ work to catch up on. Oh, well.</div>
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Anyhow, all you debate judges who find yourselves dateless
on Valentine’s Day are invited to join me for Diet Coke at the food court at
Penn. My treat. It’s the least I can do to mend those broken hearts. </div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-54578408004743041242015-02-01T11:59:00.000-05:002015-02-01T11:59:10.662-05:00In which we challenge seriousness<div class="MsoNormal">
There is something to be said for a weekend off. Following
three busy weekends at Newark, Bigle and Gem, I spent this last weekend
completely not debate-busy. I saw to a few chores, went out to eat, read a bit,
did some vacation planning. I’d forgotten how enjoyable being not debate-busy
could be. I even started wondering about what would happen if I weren’t
debate-busy every weekend, but then I realized that I’d be bored stiff, so I
put that one away for a while. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I did meditate a bit on debate as fun. Remember, I learned
about debate from my daughter, whose philosophy on the subject was always fun
first. Of course, she enjoyed actually debating—don’t get me wrong—and she was
quite good at it, earning her full allotment of TOC bids over the years. But she
never went to TOC, because the one year she would have, when she was a senior,
it conflicted with the state tournament, where all her friends were going to
be. It was no contest. She was known to blow off competing in a final round if
she hadn’t eaten all day. "I'm hungry" was reason enough. And she was arguably the world’s worst cheater in
Spades, although a bunch of her card-playing cronies at tournaments would give her a run for
her money for that title. The point is, she used debate to learn and enjoy
debate stuff, and then to travel around a little bit and expand her pool of
friends and to generally augment her high school education. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Those were the good old days. As I said, I learned from her.
I still believe that debate qua debate is great fun, including the learning
that goes into doing it well, but I also like all the socializing one gets
outside of one’s own home base. One of the things that saddens me is to see
schools who never talk to a soul outside of their own school, who haul the
wagons into a circle no outsider can intrude upon. You have the opportunity to
meet all kinds of new people, and you actively avoid it? Granted, defining
one’s clique may be a primal urge, especially in the young, but one would think
that the intellectual adventuring required in debate would help nibble away at that.
If you’ve been a debater for a few years and you haven’t made friends with
people on other teams, you’re missing out on something. If it’s because it’s
hard for you to make friends, I get it. If it’s because you stay behind the
curtain with the rest of your school, then I don’t.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Worse than this is what I see as the tendency to make debate
itself not fun. Intellectual adventure is one of the great experiences of life.
Learning new stuff, being exposed to new ideas, venturing in unexplored
territory—that’s one of the things that life is all about. But there’s a whole
branch of debate these days that instead of choosing growth has chosen
exclusion, proselytizing and general bitterness. I can hear it coming from the
rooms where debates are taking place, where everyone is so damned angry you
wonder why they’re even bothering. And it’s not just the students. The coaches
and judges are just as angry and negative. Axes are being ground, presumably to
get messages across, but I’ve always maintained that debate rounds are pretty
limited in their ability to send messages. There’s better forums, and, I wonder
if, as often as not, it’s the choir that’s being preached to. Regardless, the
pounding grind not of axes but of weekly $ircuit debate is deadening enough.
One tries to get so very good at something so very narrow and, in the broader
scope of things, not particularly important, to the exclusion of everything
else. To paraphrase Auntie Mame, life is a buffet, and too many poor sucker
debaters are sitting at one corner of the table eating the same hardtack meal
after meal. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I promise you that, no matter how many years pass, you will
remember pretty much all of your debate rounds. You will remember thirty years
hence that you beat so-and-so by running such-and-such. If you make debating in
high school that important, its importance to your existence won’t diminish
over time. But is that really what you want to remember thirty hears hence? Do
you want to remember the time you debated 16 hours straight and beat the crap
out of all comers, or do you want to remember the time you said screw it and
your team and that other team from two states over went out and had barbecue
and ended up at the miniature golf course? <o:p></o:p></div>
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Yeah, I don’t take debate that seriously. And I don’t consider
that a failing on my part. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-70800548370361804642015-01-29T19:30:00.000-05:002015-01-29T19:30:01.001-05:00In which we marvel over technology a little heading into a quiet weekend
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I worked on the Brotherly Lovers judge hires last night.
Absolutely amazing. Teams with over 20 entries, from almost literally down the
street, requesting 100% hired judge coverage. Say what? I do have a solution
for them. In PF, at least, most debaters have adults of one sort or another
with whom they live and dine and go on annual trips to Wal-Mart’s to buy new
school togs. (“Hey, Mom, these bowties look swell!”)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll bet anything that you can put a pencil
into the hands of some of these adults and, lo and behold, make judges out of
them. Jeesh. The thing is, I think a lot of schools imagine that college
tournaments have endless judge hires just waiting to be taken out of the
freezer and thawed and tossed straight into the rounds as needed. As I said yesterday,
judges tend to go to the people who travel the furthest, for the obvious reason
of the prohibitive expense of carrying extra baggage, or more to the point,
carrying extra people with normal baggage. Plane tickets and hotel rooms are
expensive, so we try to service those folks. You’re coming in on a bus from
half an hour away? Not so expensive. Since we don’t have that freezerful of
judges just waiting to go, we’ve got to make the best of what we have. Plus
there’s the need to keep a few spares on hand for the sake of a higher quality
pool and tabbing needs and covering the dodos who show up without a judge who,
even though you say you will, you really don’t want to turn away. I find it to
be almost mental comfort food that people keep demanding all these judges every
time. It’s always exactly what I expect, and that’s what I get. </div>
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I’ve been around the block a few too many times, I guess. </div>
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<br /></div>
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On the bright side, I went out to Whole Foods at lunchtime
today and got to use Apple Pay for the first time. Okay, I’m done. I never want
to have to go through the agony of having to reach into my wallet for a
credit card again. Yes, the idea of saving all that time (a good second or so
per purchase) may not be so impressive, but the coolness factor is what it’s
all about. Here! Let me pay for that!</div>
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<br /></div>
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For those wondering why I haven’t been talking about it, I
will not be attending the Bobcat, so there’s nothing to talk about. So it goes.
I only talk about tournaments I don’t attend when there’s illustrative
shenanigans worth analyzing. Otherwise all tournaments are more or less alike.
People come, people go, nothing ever happens. The fact that I’ve managed to wrangle
over 3000 posts on such nothingness does make one wonder. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-86999766949919811862015-01-28T19:30:00.000-05:002015-01-28T19:30:01.431-05:00In which blog you we will
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I had to write copy for some Star Wars books today at the
DJ. Who says getting a regular paycheck isn’t fun?</div>
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Looking at the possibilities for the next PF topic, I think
I prefer tuition. It has relatively balanced sides and, I would suspect, a
reasonable amount of empirical evidence for everyone to play with. Greeks, on
the other hand, seem to go more into right and wrong, a data-free business for
which PFers seem woefully unprepared. I hearken back to my LD days in the 90s,
when that would be exactly what we’d want to talk about. Boy, have things
changed. Around here we will have this topic for our CatNats qualifier and for
our State championship, so it’s important to pick the more debatable one.</div>
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<br /></div>
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With the Gem under the old belt, the next biggie for me is
Penn. This year it is way bigger than ever before, but it is looking to be
under control. Tonight I’ll start hiring out the available judges, which is
always fun. Your best guarantee of getting hired support is, needless to say,
to live far away. If you can walk to the tournament, you can walk with judges
to cover your entry. If you’re flying in, though, the additional costs of
flying in and housing judges is understandably burdensome. In that situation
you will always get priority. It looks as if the Brotherly Lovers have done a good
job so far of enlisting adjudicators, so I don’t think I’ll be causing too much
harm when I start clicking the buttons.</div>
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Before Penn there is, of course, Scarsdale, and all the fun
of judges debating (or, if you prefer, debaters judging). I think we’ve got
this one knocked, but it’s still a bit of a juggling act. Catholic Charlie will
probably be dropping by to help out. He’s taken to debate tabbing in a big way.
It wasn’t until after I dumped the pairing of a PF round on him while I was
down in Battery Saturday that he commented that he had never actually done that
before, i.e., clicked the buttons to make it happen. He looked to me like an
old pro. He claims that all of us have trained him well, while I claim that he’s
just a natural. He has all the right skills for tabbing: a sense of humor,
patience, clever math skills, well-aimed biliousness when the moment calls for
it, and the ability to listen to more than the usual amount of ukulele music.
If you’re interested in tabbing yourself, you might want to start by working on
those talents. </div>
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Of course, the Gem was almost completely hassle free as far
as dispensing bile was concerned. There was the usual judge complaining about
having to judge too much. This call inspired me, so I stormed into my boss’s
office on Monday and demanded that she stop making me work all day because my
frail constitution wasn’t up to it. Fortunately, she wasn’t there at the time,
and I still have a place at the old DJ. Where I’m writing Star Wars copy. It’s
for a cookbook. May the forks be with you. </div>
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<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-1092179934030348102015-01-27T19:30:00.000-05:002015-01-27T19:30:01.110-05:00In which we throw water on troubled oils and watch the MHL tentatively rise from its death bed<div class="MsoNormal">
If you followed the comments to my last post, you will have
seen O’C questioning my assertions about break rounds. He is right to do so.
The issue of break rounds is more complicated than it might appear offhand,
insofar as most tournaments are settled into a routine and people are used to
those routines and don’t really question them, even though the routines vary
wildly. We’re going to do a podcast on it in the very near future. Also on that
agenda will be the management of wait lists, since when I was talking about
that a while ago himself also took O’Cean umbrage at the way I was handling <i>that</i>
issue. That seems to be another good subject for discussion. Those of us in our
traveling tab room have long ago committed to transparency. We’ve also
committed to learning as we go along, and improving if we can. Exploring the
issues openly is the name of the game. Stay posted. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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(On the other hand, I will point out that, as always, I am
right and he is wrong, but the VCA knows that from the getgo, so it’s hardly
worth mentioning it. Then again, if I were stuck in the middle of Georgia with
nothing but a tarnished Emory Key for solace in the deep, dark nights while planes
continue to not fly overhead, I’d be taking umbrage at everything that wasn’t
nailed too. The plane home from Columbia to Hudville was right on time and
didn’t even lose my baggage.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the middle of all the hoo-ha of the Gem, there was also
an MHL down at Stuyvesant. (The Gem is up and the Battery's down, to put it into a song.) Since I’ve been sitting at the MHL’s deathbed for a while
now, holding its little hand and giving it ice cubes to suck on while the
doctors and nurses ignore us as they share ribald stories in the break room, I
was on tenterhooks for the success of this one. It has been put forth that
holding these events out of the city was part of the problem, and that does
seem to be true. Even though the day was hit with a storm that cost us a few
northern teams (including the Sailor novices), the event was a success. I
zipped down there after I got the opening VLD round of the day organized at the Gem, and working
with James Bathurst, we got everything set up and everybody going on Chambers
Street, and then James took it from there. So I guess the MHL isn’t quite dead
yet. But we need to rethink a few things. The Workshop is good, the
First-Timers is good, the Blowout is good. The so-called normal MHLs are what
we need to work on. We’ll have plenty of time to figure out a plan, probably
during the NYSDCA championship. <o:p></o:p></div>
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By the way, if you’re not from around here, the storm missed
us last night, and we only got a not terrible few inches. Boston, on the other
hand, looks as if it was hammered. Thank God for the timing, vis-à-vis forensicians.
After last year’s pounding weekend after weekend, the storms this year seem to be
shifting to the work week, where they belong. In any case, I stayed home today
and did DJ work, reading a really good book. Yes, they pay me for that. It’s
not as good as it sounds, though. They mostly pay me to read really bad books
in order to find that small handful of really good books among them. Usually my
brain is in pain from it. But you probably knew that already.<o:p></o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-25818821088958740192015-01-26T19:30:00.000-05:002015-01-26T19:30:00.805-05:00In which Columbia is a Gem<div class="MsoNormal">
So, sez you, how was the Gem? Splendid, sez I, exaggerating
only slightly.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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First of all, we had new digs over at Barnard for tab
and GA and judges. Those of us who have made it through the years at Lerner
Hall on the Columbia campus looked back on those days of freezing our butts off
in tab (they apparently only turn on the heat for one day a month, and never
the day we’re there), listening to some yabbo banging on the lounge piano
nearby, standing on tiptoes to see out the window if there was any sun, and
walking up and down that ramp that, if it had existed at the time, would have
been Hitchcock’s first choice for most of the scenes in <i>Vertigo</i>, were as pleased as
punch. JV was able to radiate all the speech rounds out from this hub, and
things went fine for them. We did not have that luxury in debate. For LD, we
had the The School, which I think is named after some guy named The. It did fit
all the LDers, and we had a good major domo there, and wifi, so after a round
or two we switched to e-ballots, and it worked great. I have to admit I was
wary of judges wandering off, but the pool was almost entirely the usual
suspects, the ones who go and do their job and everyone is happy. It was a joy.
Thank you, CP, for e-Bs. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Unfortunately, we had PF in a couple of different places,
and given the usual state of the PF pool, we didn’t go for e-Bs, although I
think I will give it a shot next time. PF is getting better at it in general,
although as always the PF pool is way less likely to know what electricity is and
to be too worried about the whole debate process in the first place to want
to take a stab at e-Bs. But I think in a year we’ll have evolved enough. We’ll
see. The thing is, walking ballots back and forth fifteen minutes away adds
half an hour to each round. Sigh.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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We were hit with a small snow storm Friday night, but it had
surprisingly little effect on things Saturday morning. Pretty much everybody
showed up. A note for the future though: if you are planning on complaining
about things on Sunday, it’s a good idea to call in your drops on Saturday
rather than making us go to the rooms to see that you’re not there. Just
sayin’.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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There were the usual shenanigans. Speech judge call on
Sunday had the folks handing Mary’s ballot to someone who looked suspiciously
like Ralph more than a few times. When you assign your judges based on their
abilities and they throw in a ringer, so much for all your careful planning.
The LD judges were fantastic, on the other hand, and I don’t recall pushing a
single ballot except on Saturday morning as we were shuffling things because of
team no-shows. I don’t think there were any judge no-shows. Wow! On Sunday
there were various complaints about this and that, my favorite being the coach
who complained that the PF outrounds should have been earlier. My recommendation
was that said coach go back in time and carry every judge to his or her rounds to speed things up. Granted it was slow, but people, tab turned the PF ballots
around, from last in to next posting, in under 5 minutes every time. (Thanks again, CP.) It
wasn’t us, in other words, it was just the beast that is PF. We’ve seen this
pretty much at every tournament, that PF is slower than [your metaphor here].
Unless this is the first tournament you’ve ever attended, you should know that
by now. Deal with it. Don’t call up the tournament director to whine. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Then there was the complaint that not enough people broke.
No, we didn’t break all the down-2s in PF. Doing so would have meant breaking
more than a third of the field. We talked a lot about this in tab, and of
course it was Columbia’s decision in the end. A reasonable varsity tournament breaks
about 25% of the field. Breaking a third of the field (in anything other than a
novice event) is reminiscent of every kid in kindergarten getting a medal, even
if they come in last. Varsity debate isn’t kindergarten, people. (I won’t
bother to point out that if we had decided to break all the 4-2s we didn’t have
the rooms to do it, because we never got to the practicality of the business.
The decision was spiritual.) There is a solution to the 4-2 screw (which is
obviously common enough to have a nickname): debate better. Or, if you’re the
coach, coach better. Jeesh! That’s the thing about college tournaments versus
high school venues. A lot of the teams seem to have just come out of the
cabbage patch. Give me grizzled veterans any day.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Somewhere in all of this we managed to pull off an MHL. More
about that later. Meanwhile, I've put up a new post about MJP panels in the Tabroom Adventures blog, if you're interested.<o:p></o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-87648971922185093812015-01-21T19:30:00.000-05:002015-01-21T19:30:00.308-05:00In which we wonder, wander and moan
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[There's a new short post over at Adventures, if you're into that whole inside-baseball thing.]</div>
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<br /></div>
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As we creep into the dawn of the Gem of Harlem, I’m sort of
surprised by the numbers. Given the demand for slots this whole season, Gem has
been surprisingly light. It’s not small by any means, 100 or so each of LD and
PF, but it’s not got door-busting waitlists like everyone else has had. Even
O’C seems satisfied with the number of slots he’s gotten, which in ’ertford,
’ereford or ’ampshire ’ardly ever ’appens. We talked about this a bit at Bigle.
One of the things is probably that it’s so damned expensive for schools to
travel to NYC. There’s no hotel bargains, so you can really end up depleting
the old annual budget. Then again, we’ve had a history of people who have flown in
primarily because they want to go sightseeing, and who have tickets for <i>Wicked</i>
Saturday night and thus blow off the tournament altogether, but these
miscreants seem to have evaporated. I can’t say that I miss them. A lot of them
seemed to come from Utah. I think they really came to see <i>The Book of Mormon</i>,
and only pretended to see <i>Wicked</i>. Whatever. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Meanwhile, back at the battleship, the Sailors will soon be
bidding a fond farewell to one of our novices, who is being shipped to
California for some reason or other, apparently because they don’t have enough
people in California already and they have to take ours. This leaves us with
half a very good PF team, although the survivor claims she has a substitute
waiting in the wings, who will appear at next week’s meeting. We’re going to be
doing a practice round, which may be the best introduction to the event, as
compared to me doing the orientation that historically has scared of 125% of
all the potential plebes at the first meeting. I do hope this works out. That’s
a big problem with a small team in the PF business. It doesn’t take much to
rock the boat. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Last night we began to look at the Feb PF resolution. It’s
very straightforward. The pro is empirically proven to be true on face in
literally every piece of research known to man or beast, so once again you sit
around wondering if anyone at the NSDA ever actually looks at these things
before sending them out. The alternative one had ships passing in the night,
and a virtual certainty of not generating any clash. Here is what I would do if
I ran the circus. Do whatever it is you do now to pick topics, but when you’re
at the final point, write them on a board and stare at them. Then do 10 minutes
of research. Then write down pro arguments and con arguments. If, for any
reason, you can’t find arguments for one side, start over. This rez is in
amazingly clumsy English: <span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">On
balance, economic globalization benefits worldwide poverty reduction. Benefits
poverty reduction? As compared to harms poverty reduction? Would it kill them
to use phrases that have at some point in the history of humanity actually been
used before? My guess is that they wanted a topic along the lines of
globalization benefiting developing nations, but couldn’t actually come out and
say that because, well, it doesn’t sound debatey enough. Me, I’m just trying to
figure out pleonastic use of globalization and worldwide. They missed that? Or
they’re envisioning a scenario where globalization must benefit <i>all</i> poverty
reduction worldwide? Or what? It can’t just be the DJ that makes me so word
conscious. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it, well, more than once: The NSDA
needs to hire an editor. Even though we often know what they’re trying to say,
they don’t consistently actually say it. In a debate round, where the handful
of words of a resolution ought to determine everything that follows, that
handful of words better be precise. No wonder LD doesn’t bother with rezzes
anymore and prefers the EILDR: it’s easier to ignore some of these resolutions
as compared to actually trying to figure them out, or worse, debate them. Anyhow, we did come up with a couple
of good strategies for February, to wit, either flip pro or take the month off.
</span></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">[Sigh.]</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-23294225327511134252015-01-20T19:30:00.000-05:002015-01-20T19:30:01.815-05:00In which we ponder change
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Members of the VCA will recall—if they have memories like
iron vises—a discussion between CP and me about the number of MJP categories.
I’ve gotten pretty used to 6 categories, with 6 being a strike and conflicts
being separate. Tabroom allows you to set as many categories as you want. I’ve
experimented with 5 for small pools, but found that unnecessary when I’ve
compared similar pools with 6. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Palmer’s argument in favor of more categories is simple,
that more categories allow for closer mutuality. Imagine 60 judges broken down
into 6 categories of 10. My 1 can be 9 away from your 1, and in a 1-2, it can
be up to 19 away. With 60 and 9 categories, my 1 is 6 or so away from your 1,
and in a 1-2, it can be up to 13. And keep in mind that the scale slides, as if
you’re looking at the numbers with a literal slide rule, which is the entire
basis of ordinal MJP, another thing entirely. (We’ll get there shortly.) These
numbers are clearly mathematically better, and CP’s argument is based on the
undeniable math. In practice though, it may or may not work out that way. If
you have fewer 1s you have less likelihood of mutual 1s, so you’re more often
doing 1-2s (and 2-3s and 3-4s). At this point, you may or may not be getting
the benefit of the math anymore. I don’t know. You’d have to look at it knowing
not only the ranks in the 1-9 tournament but what the coaches would have ranked
in a 1-6 scenario. Impossible. </div>
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So is it worth going against the norm? I mean, I wouldn’t do
ordinals which, following the math of the slide rule, probably gives you the
closest mutuality, because the field is not really familiar with the idea.
After all, we’ve only been doing MJP regularly for a couple of years, and there
is still a significant percentage of schools who simply don’t pref, for whatever
reason. I used to do a whole campaign trying to get them to do it, on the
assumption (a good one) that these were more conservative schools who believed
(wrongly) that MJP favored circuit styles, which it only did if the more
conservative schools didn't pref, a perfect example of a self-fulfilling
prophecy. I worked with a number of people to come up with elementary
categorization of judges as traditional, circuit or newly trained. We did
everything we could, but at some point, something becomes standard practice and
it’s no longer our responsibility to insure that everyone understands what
we’re doing. Let’s face it: schools that don’t pref now certainly wouldn’t do
it if only we went to ordinals. We’d probably have about the same buy-in
eventually that we have now. Lord knows, I’ve really wanted to experiment with
ordinals because I do believe that it probably renders better mutuality. But
here’s the thing. In practice, if the difference between 6 and 9 isn’t all that
much and not really demonstrable (even though we know it has to be true that 9
is better), is the difference between ordinals and 9 and/or 6 any more
demonstrable or, in fact, all that much? I ask this because you’ve got to take
into consideration the users. If I can prove in theory that ordinals is better,
does that really matter when I can’t prove it in practice? Users don’t like
change, unless they get a direct, measurable benefit. It doesn’t matter what
product the users are evaluating. If they don’t see something in it for themselves,
they won’t do whatever is necessary to take up the product. That’s why those
conservative schools remain resistant to MJP. They don’t see the benefit to
themselves of trying to figure out all these judges they’ve never heard of, even with
our little crib sheet of Trad/Circ/New. As for everyone else, we’ve got them on
board with MJP now, except for the ones who regularly query why they got a 4
and why didn’t their opponent. Is the benefit of a different system—and
ordinals is a radically different system while 9 vs. 6 is only a slightly
different system—worth the hassle? Do we think users, i.e., debate coaches, are
clamoring for it? </div>
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Mutuality only promises one thing: that you and your
opponent think similarly about a judge. Ordinals probably gives you the closest
possible mutuality, but in the end is it all that much different from what
we’re already doing to warrant the havoc of change (and all change is havoc)?
So many coaches now seem to be convinced that better MJP numbers equates with
better results, as if their debaters aren’t good enough to just look at the
judge they’ve got and pick up that ballot, period. Everything else is just
playing with the data because we can. Should we nurture coaches’ worst
competitive instincts? Maybe this would happen. As we move into any newer,
deeper system, we lose the older, not-so-deep people. LD has already lost the
buy-in of a lot of folks because of its arcane, non-resolutional styles. Should
we add to that the most complicated ranking system possible, the one that
requires encyclopedic understanding of every pool every week (unless it’s the
same old deadbeat college judges traveling from circuit tournament to circuit
tournament, the familiarity with which is also in the $ircuit coach’s favor)?
You’ve got to draw the line somewhere. </div>
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I say, for the time being, we draw the line where we are
now. There may be theoretical ways of doing it better, but are they practical?
Aren’t we better off locking in, at least for a while, best practices that stay
put, rather than always throwing new stuff at people?</div>
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This is not a plea from a hyper-conservative for
hyper-conservatism. It’s just the ramblings of a realist suggesting that every
change made has repercussions, and we need to study and understand the
repercussions before we make the next change. 6-step MJP is settling in. How
has that affected the activity, if it has at all? I want to know the answer to
that before moving to something else. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-38851823003218237472015-01-19T14:56:00.000-05:002015-01-19T14:59:55.004-05:00In which nothing goes wrong, consarn it!The VCA will appreciate my disappointment over last weekend’s Bigle X. JV and I were tabbing VLD, under the very nose of CP, if his nose is considered big enough to extend from the other building a mile away to where we were. He set everything up in taboom. If anything went wrong, it was his fault. I touched nothing. My hands were clean. And when the whole thing blew up, I was ready to sit there innocently, twiddling my thumbs and whistling a melancholy tune, wondering how anything like that could possibly happen, with my finger meanwhile surreptitiously poised on the “I told you so” key of computer to let the world know that I was right and he was wrong, bru ha ha ha ha.<br>
<br>
No such luck. Everything went fine. Or, curses, foiled again.<br>
<br>
This year Bigle X went off on a completely new schedule that had most people arriving for housing on Friday night, with the first round at a luxurious 9:00 the following morning. For debaters, this is like being on vacation. Then we followed with three more rounds, getting done for the day at the ungodly hour of 7:00 p.m. or so. Very elegant. Very $ircuit, for that matter. Sunday started at 8 and went on for quite a while after that, and was a little more brutal. As there was no run-off round, there was a 4-2 screw built into the proceedings. Then again, breaking all the 4-2s means that around a third of the field gets moved up. This is very nice and very generous, but it also seems a bit much. If you’re such a great debater, and you can’t make it into the top 25% of the field, well, No, you’re not. It is not inconceivable that, by stretching out Saturday they could find time for a run-off, but I think they’re right doing it the way they’re doing it. After all, I do something similar at Bump. And anyhow, although there are occasionally exceptions to this, the very top debaters remain the same whether you have 6 rounds or 5 rounds, much less a run-off, and if run-off round is big enough, the much higher seeds mostly always beat the lower seeds anyhow. Those exceptions don’t warrant making a well thought out tournament with extravagant meals and lots of student housing into a painful marathon. CP and Kaz have really put together a good one, and this is determined by the person who, one year, stormed in and unceremoniously cancelled the final Bigle X round that was about to begin at midnight because, well, I had had enough, and I had to wake up the judges and tell them to go home. I have always maintained that when debate rounds and child labor laws are in conflict, we take the children off the assembly line like the responsible adults that some of us are. I stand by that. So, apparently, do CP and Kaz.<br>
<br>
In the middle of all of this, the attending members of DisAd14, joined by CP, had a lovely dinner Saturday night. (Contrary to expectations, CP and I actually do put up with each other, as long as I’m not writing bug reports that he claims are features for which everyone else in the known universes kisses the ground he walks on in grateful thanks.) Ruining the weekend was the ridiculously bad ice storms back home. The Sailors would have held on a lot longer and had our traditional end of Lex dinner at Rein’s Deli, but NY was in a state of siege, from the looks of things on the interwebs. Going our normal Rein’s route was an ice-covered chess game with death at 31 degrees fahrenheit, compared to i95, which was 45 degrees all the way. Longer, yes, but easily survivable. The irretrievable downside to this, aside from the extra hour of travel time, was that dinner was at a Subway. A Subway!!!! Just typing the word gives me the willies. Our own Mary Poppins was behind me on the line, and had to give me instructions on how to order. She seemed surprised when I told her that the last time I went to a Subway was when I was in college. I hadn’t liked it much, so I hadn’t gone back. She did the math on that, her head spun a bit, and she spent the rest of the trip asking, Exactly how old are you, Grandpa?<br>
<div>
<br></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-52847893768422844022015-01-16T13:30:00.000-05:002015-01-16T13:30:00.082-05:00In which we refer you elsewhereI've run a couple of tournaments over the years, so I found Dave McGinnis's article quite interesting: <a href="http://nsdupdate.com/2015/01/16/lone-wolves-a-guide-from-a-tournament-director/">http://nsdupdate.com/2015/01/16/lone-wolves-a-guide-from-a-tournament-director/</a> He nails it, i.e., the reasons why independent debaters are increasingly persona non grata, and what to do about it. I might be the strictest constructionist on independence in the universe, but I've also let in plenty of indies when I've had direct and honest contact with them, as Dave suggests. You might not like what he's saying, especially if you're a firm believer in the inherent Right to Debate (which I've discussed elsewhere), but what he's saying about the opinions and feelings of tournament directors is absolutely true. (So, I think, is just about everything else he's saying.) <br />
<br />
And in a btw, I just put a new shortie into the tabroom blog, about using multiple devices.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-73492230399104092802015-01-15T21:17:00.001-05:002015-01-15T21:17:42.417-05:00Meanwhile, over in Adventures<a href="http://tabroomadventures.blogspot.com/2015/01/mjp-deadlines.html">http://tabroomadventures.blogspot.com/2015/01/mjp-deadlines.html</a> is a short piece on the setting of MJP deadlines, if you're interested in that sort of thing. Seems sort of odd to talk about, after that rant on PF. I contradict myself? Phooey.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-9133724393996698332015-01-15T21:15:00.000-05:002015-01-15T21:15:33.649-05:00In which we continue discussing the future, if any, of PF<style>
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Kellams is not the first person to warn that PF will
probably go the way of Policy and LD, losing its accessibility in favor of
arcana. CP claims that this is a law of nature, that anything that people can
make more complicated they <i>will</i> make more complicated, or words to that effect.
So the question is, Is PF doomed?</div>
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In Policy, whoever has more evidence wins (I know,
oversimplification, but you know what I mean), hence we get speed and computers
and teams that are evidence-producing machines and summer camps that process
evidence and assistant coaches with no job other than to cut evidence, reaching
to a point where if you <i>don’t</i> have all of those things, you can’t compete with
the people who do. In PF, whoever has more evidence also wins (again, obvious oversimplification),
but in Policy a topic is announced months in advance and lasts an entire
season, whereas in PF a topic is announced every month, right before you’ve
started debating the last topic. It is not inconceivable that you can create
some sort of evidence-collecting machine, but there’s really no time for a team
to process that evidence. Comparing the evidence in a PF round to the evidence
in a Policy round is ludicrous. You have months and months to explore your
evidence and go wherever it takes you in Policy; you’ve got about three hours
to do that in PF. So I think we can safely say that, at least in this one area,
PF will remain roughly where it is. I think PFers will start getting a little
more sophisticated (or more accurately, a little less sloppy) with evidence in
the future, especially with the new NSDA rules, but they are inherently limited
by time from becoming truly like Policy in that area. If you don’t have a
tub slash flashdrive slash cloud drive (pick your generation) of evidence to
work with, speed doesn’t help you all that much, so you don’t get the ever-increasing pressure to get more said in the round. If the evidence collection
pushed the need for speed, and I think it did, and if evidence collection in PF
is limited, hence the need for speed itself is limited. </div>
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Of course, LD also got fast, and certainly some PF rounds
I’ve heard have not exactly been pokey. A case will expand, probably, of its
own nature. As you learn more about debate and get better at it, you have more
you want to say. LD’s move to speed has been in line with its move to
professional adjudicators, a trait it shared in its development with Policy.
Speed, in a way, only works with professional adjudicators, i.e., people able,
and willing, to deal with it. When I started in LD, there were a lot of parent
judges out there. Today, the only parent judges are ringers teams bring in
because they’re too cheap to hire professional adjudicators. You know as well
as I do that in an MJP universe, parent judges spend the first three rounds
reading <i>War and Peace,</i> and then get some 0-4 or 0-5 rounds after that. I think
this is one of the saddest things that has happened because of LD’s
complification (wow—a coinage that demonstrates itself), that it is no longer
really open to parents. </div>
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These are just technical issues, though, and only part of
the story. Yes, obviously speed drives out the slow, but there’s also content.
I’ve talked about this a lot in the past. When your professional adjudicators
are mostly college students, in their own academic universe, there is a
tendency for them to believe that they know more than high school students
(which is true) and that they can make the high school students better debaters
by marginally instructing them in what they know (which is probably not true).
College students are instructed by college professors, then the college
students turn around and instruct their own high school students. Presumably
the college professors are, as a general rule, knowledgeable educational
professionals. Probably the college students aren’t. If they were re-teaching
something objective, like, say, how to tie a knot, it wouldn’t matter, because
the end result is either a knot or it isn’t. But they’re re-teaching things
like Nietzsche (for a random example), which is about as objective as [fill in
your own metaphor here for something way subjective, using your most
relativistic Nietzschean-type aphorism]. In a world where most Nietzsche
scholarship is contradictory explanations of what the man might have been saying,
the last thing the world needs is some college kid who just read Zarathustra
explaining to a high school student how to use it to write a kritik of
socio-economics in 21st Century America. The bind moggles. </div>
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Which brings me to what I’ve always claimed is the not-so-secret
weapon that will keep PF PFish. There is nothing intrinsically keeping PF from
falling prey to a modernist or structuralist or postmodern or post-postmodern
agenda due to the content of the event. The EILDR has demonstrated that the content
of the round is meaningless if judges are perfectly content to let debaters
debate whatever they choose. It’s the judges themselves that control the agenda
of an event, and it is the use of professional adjudicators in high school
debate—i.e., college students who should have something better to do with their
weekends than to hang around high schools 40 weekends out of the year—that has
made Policy and LD what they are today. It is the use of non-professional
adjudicators, i.e., lay judges, i.e., parents and random community members, who
are our great hope for keeping PF from going the same route. <br />
<br />
This, then, becomes something of a challenge. Can lay judging can insure the continued accessibility of debate via Public Forum? At the moment, the starting investment for a school doing PF is minimal. Any reasonable teacher can figure out the resolutions. There's no arcana in the performances any more complicated than having a point or theme to underly the arguments (which most PFers don't bother with anyhow, and most likely that's the next generation of PF—"Now featuring <i>frameworks</i>," i.e., a reason to vote for a side other than evidence avoirdupois). Most tournaments offer PF, often at multiple levels (although not enough—what's the rationale for Novice LD and no Novice PF at the same tournament?). So starting friction for a new coach is minimal, as are the costs, in that you can probably find local contests. Starting friction is similarly minimal for the students, who only have to read up on the rez and find out the parts of an argument. The thing is, those things can change. PF could get arcane. It could get really hard to get into and understand. Rounds could be unintelligible to anyone without years of prior experience. But as long as the person in the back of the room was born yesterday, a parent helping the team, pitching in to help, a smart adult who knows the world in general and can understand the arguing of a resolution if it is indeed argued in an accessible oratorical style, all the arcana is self-destructive for the team trying to pick up a ballot. As I said above, it’s the judges themselves that control the agenda of an event. Given that virtually entire pools of judges of PF were born yesterday, that they wouldn't understand an RVI if it bit them on the butt, that their familiarity with the latest trendy pseudophilosophy is literally nil, and that they have no need whatsoever to prove themselves smarter than the 17-year-olds in the building, at least one of which they feed on a daily basis and have taught practically everything that kid knows, the not-so-secret weapon of parent judging is an irresistible force.<br />
<br />
Parent judging was once common in LD. It got tossed aside. It can, presumably, get tossed aside in PF. But I don't see any signs of that happening. Every tournament I go to, there's a whole new bunch of faces in the pool who look at me like I'm nuts when I explain that speaker points are on a scale of 20 to 30. (It's not me that's nuts, it's the nut who came up with the pre-truncated 1 to 30 in the first place). People who feel as I do, that PF is the only accessible debate event, the one that the most kids can be brought into in a high school, and given that it can be the most popular academic forensic event, it is simple arithmetic that it will provide the most educational forensics benefit to the greatest number, that we are, in effect, obligated to keep it open and free. Those of us who run teams and tournaments need to keep an eye on it. We need to keep it light. Is there some horror in having debate lite when debate heavy is also available? No. Is there some horror in having a debate activity that you don't have to fly to every weekend, that isn't so heavily invested in competitive aggression that the same schools win over and over and over and over at $ircuit events, not because they're somehow bloody wonderful, but because they're the only ones who are really doing it? Do the supporters of elite debate, who no doubt bristle at being accused of elitism in any other aspect of their lives, not listen to themselves?<br />
<br />
I don't ask much, only that those of us in a position to do so keep the faith. Debate for the greatest number. At the moment, that's PF. It's too late for LD. If PF does eventually go the path of LD and Policy, as many people predict, then we'll just have to come up with something else. Well, actually, you'll have to come up with something else. I'll be long gone from the activity by then. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-2131555520843477332015-01-14T19:30:00.000-05:002015-01-14T19:30:01.283-05:00In which we start talking about PF, but don't<style>
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When I wrote that piece recently on <a href="http://coachean.blogspot.com/2015/01/in-which-we-get-all-historical.html" target="_blank">the history of LD</a>, James
Kellams commented: <span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>I
can confirm LD is still pretty traditional in the NSDA districts in which we
compete...or at least the evolution is occurring at a much slower pace. But,
don't be surprised when PF Debate takes the same path to specialization and
exclusionary tactics. I learned a long time ago, for students and many
competitive coaches it is not about education, it is all about winning and its
associated "glory.”</i> Kellams writes the invaluable <a href="http://everydaydebate.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Everyday Debate blog</a>,
If you have any interest at all in actually debating the resolutions, it’s
highly recommended. If you prefer the EILDR approach, he’s probably not your
man.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There
has always been a major distinction between local and $ircuit debate. Once upon
a time that distinction hung on that supercilious first character I’ve loaded
the word with: some teams had a lot of money, and a travel circuit of moneyed
teams developed where those teams could spend that money. Others have described
the circuit (no supercilious character) somewhat differently, as the place
where high-level teams could debate other high-level teams. They got to be high-level teams by having a lot of resources (including going to debate camps). In the
natural course of events, their style of debating did indeed become different
from the styles of teams with lesser resources, for reasons too complicated to go into at the moment. Sometimes non-circuit teams
might emulate styles and practices from the $ircuit, and sometimes not. The
$ircuit did, of necessity, start to regard its styles and practices as better.
You can hardly put your team on a plane every weekend or spend a couple of thousand bucks for
a week or two of summer camp if it wasn’t better. The reality of its
“betterness” is debatable, but the reality of premium products being set aside
from and costing more than non-premium products is a cultural/economic reality.
If we assign a high value to something, however arbitrary, and enough people
agree that the thing has a high value, it has a high value. You need walk no
further than from the nearest diner to the nearest Starbucks, buying a cup of
coffee in each, for an object lesson in this. </span></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So
the justification of $ircuit debate is the $ircuit’s self-justification as
better debate. There are any number of people that will tell you that debate at
the TOC is better than debate at NSDA, or that debate at bid tournaments is
better than debate at non-bid tournaments, or whatever variations on this theme
you want to entertain. We all know, of course, that this judgment is
subjective, entirely based on who is defining what is good/better/best in
debate. (If you don’t know this at an “of course” level, you need to catch up
on the major thinkers of the 20th century.) For that matter, at a purely LD
level, we can throw different values up as what we are attempting to achieve.
If we’re attempting to educate the most people and bring the greatest number
into the forensics tent, present-day $ircuit styles fail completely. If our
value is getting the most number of elite trophies, well, that’s what $ircuit
is all about in the first place. If we value the most education, again I think
$ircuit fails. If one believes that arguing a lot of different contentions
teaches one about a lot of different things, whereas arguing the EILDR teaches
one a lot about one thing, then it’s simply a matter of valuing either foxes or
hedgehogs. </span></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Because
I live in a region dominated by $ircuit LD teams, my vision is not necessarily
all that clear. I see what’s in front me. Kellams, in Ohio, sees what’s in
front of him. Honestly, I like the LD he sees better than the LD I see. But
what I really wanted to talk about here was PF. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Tomorrow.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-37749041009202704982015-01-13T19:30:00.000-05:002015-01-13T19:30:00.774-05:00In which we refrain from gearing up for Bigle X, among other thingummies
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I just posted some commentary on
<a href="http://tabroomadventures.blogspot.com/">tabroomadventures.blogspot.com</a> about how we handled the Blue Ribbon judges at
Newark. Curiously, no one seems to have said a word about this publicly, I mean
about the idea of BR judges in the first place. As I say in that other post, which is
otherwise very much inside-baseball, I haven’t thought about it much myself. I
guess in a way it’s not unlike the pre-MJP days, when tab put who tab thought
were the best judges into the toughest rounds, so it’s not as revolutionary as
one might think. It just happens to do the same thing with total transparency. </div>
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I would imagine things are heating up for Bigle X. I have
yet to muddy CP’s waters (although I do hope at some point they let us have
some rooms) with my own (what he would call) mucking about in the system. JV
and I will be doing VLD and O’C and Bro John are doing NLD in the same middle
school venue. Mostly what I’ve been thinking about is that, after dropping the
Sailors off at the high school Friday night to be housed, the only one I might
see again before dinner at Rein’s Sunday night is my lone, lorn LD creetur’.
You can’t wait around for your teams to get housed if you're a couple of miles
away. Those of you who never did any of this before the cellphone era have no
idea of what we used to go through. You’re not missing a thing. </div>
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In terms of heating up, the Gem of Harlem has gone from 0 to
60 (mixed metaphor noted and ignored) with a snap of the fingers. TBAs will be
executed tomorrow night, judges will be allocated Saturday morning, and there
you are. There’s still a lot of logistical issues to be discussed, but JV and I
can hash that out when we’re together at Lex. I did do a big clearing of the
waitlist Sunday and told people that if they weren’t cleared, it was probably
because of their history of shenanigans or because I didn’t believe they were
real teams, given that they had entered themselves or passed the job off to
their mothers. I expected this to draw some heated replies, but the only
response I got to my message, which also said that I’d be releasing more slots
in a couple of days, was a query whether I’d be releasing more slots in a
couple of days. [Sigh.]</div>
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Anyhow, if you’re nuts-and-boltish, pop on over to the other
blog and check out that post. And if you have opinions on Blue Ribboners, let
me know. I’m curious about what people think.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-60737310202850181592015-01-12T19:30:00.000-05:002015-01-12T19:30:00.432-05:00In which we break out and get down
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I’ve decided to break out material about tabroom.com from
Coachean Life into a separate site when that material can be useful from a how-to
perspective. That is, the legendary (or perhaps mythical) Traveling Tab Room
(primarily myself, Kaz, O’C and JV) have adventures every weekend that might
help someone else work their way through this big and complicated system. In
addition to describing our problems and how we solved them, I’ll post hints and
tips people might find useful. The first post is on <a href="https://www.blogger.com/%5Bhttp://tabroomadventures.blogspot.com/2015/01/bracketing-issues.html%5D" target="_blank">Bracketing Issues. </a></div>
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CP thinks we always have problems because we’re just lousy
at tabbing; we all think otherwise. I’ll let you be the judge of who’s right
and who is simply taller than everyone else. </div>
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Meanwhile, the non-tabbing high point of tabbing Newark was
the revelation that I no longer am able to communicate to anyone under the age
of thirty. When I told a Newark kid that a certain judge was guaranteed to “turn
up,” the entire tournament broke down in wild hysterics. O’C immediately felt
compelled to report this verbal blunder on Facebook (which maybe I shouldn’t
take too seriously, because he feels compelled to report everything that ever
happens to him on Facebook). I wasn’t terribly taken aback that, A) a
perfectly common English language idiom had been coopted for other idiomatic
uses, or B) that I haven’t kept up with the way these damned kids talk nowadays,
no doubt because I spend too much time shooing them off my lawn rather than
listening to them talk “hip” to one another. We solved the problem by having O’C
go with me for the rest of the tournament whenever I needed to talk to a young
person, to translate on the fly. Who knew that the phrase “Do you have the
ballot yet?” translates as “Can I take your grandmother to the Virgin Islands
for a weekend of wild and wooly shenanigans that you’re not old enough to know
about,” or that “Where’s the judges’ lounge?” translates as “There’s a toilet
on your head, you yabbo?” </div>
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There is still so much to learn. </div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-75011239541855813502015-01-07T19:30:00.000-05:002015-01-07T19:30:01.267-05:00In which we point ourselves at New JerseyThe last few days have been mostly spent working on the Newark tournament. It’s unique in many ways, not the least of which is single-flighted VLD. That requires an awful lot of judges, and I don’t know what hat Jonathan pulls them out of, but there they are. With 11 judges in each pref band, this should be a joy. There will also be a handful of Blue Ribbon judges, automatic 1s for everyone. JA has mixed feelings about MJP, so this way he gets to keep the teeming masses content while satisfying his own desire for unique judging experiences beyond one’s own wheelhouse, so to speak. It should be interesting to see how this plays out in tab. It’s like having wildcards to deal out. Where should they go? I’m sure there will be much discussion of this over the next couple of days.<br />
<br />
There’s also the Round Robin. Say what you will about tabroom (all right, let’s rephrase that: say what <i>I</i> will about tabroom), it does an awful lot of stuff really well, RRs among that number. Click the odd button, and bang, all the pairings for all the rounds. I did the judges round-by-round because I wanted to make sure that we were using everybody the way JA wanted them used (some to death, some just as they came up). I did it first with repeat judging, then went back and did it even better without repeats. Kowabunga! There is nothing so nice in tournament management as having more judges than you know what to do with. <br />
<br />
Somehow in all of this I managed to forget to create the Stuyvesant MHL. Maybe it’s because I’m not particularly sanguine about its chances for breathing life into the league. I’ll have it ready tomorrow. I will make it clear to the teeming millions that if they don’t support this one, well, three strikes and it might be out. <br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-4259594733921092732015-01-06T19:30:00.000-05:002015-01-06T19:30:00.801-05:00In which we might soon be bidding a fond farewell to a treasured institutionWe’ve now managed to eliminate or almost eliminate two MHL tournaments. To put it mildly, we are in a quandary about this.<br />
<br />
First of all, why have two of these events in a row tanked? I’ve heard various reasons given, the venues were too far away being the most popular. But these same events have been doorbusters at those venues in the past, or at least viable. Yeah, Monticello is far away, but not having any debate that weekend is even further away, if you know what I mean. Newark is far away? From whom? Certainly not New Yorkers, who can pop on a train in be there in the proverbial blink. Come to think of it, aside from people in Monticello, for most schools getting to Newark is a piece of cake. <br />
<br />
I think it goes deeper than that. For one thing, policy, once a mainstay of the league, has all but fled completely into discrete city leagues both in NY and Jersey. Few non-urban schools have policy teams around here, and those that do haven’t been terribly religious about MHL attendance. They’ve concentrated on invitationals wherever they might be, and I’ve always wondered how they developed varsity to get on those planes in the first place if they never had any rounds for novices. Am I saying that policy is dead around here? Not at all, because those urban leagues seem to be doing a fine job. But they’re not venturing much out of their neighborhoods, for whatever reason (presumably, and reasonably, financial—even though MHLs are virtually free, you still have to get there and back, and no one gives away transportation). Critical policy mass is long gone aside from UDLs: hell, when I started the Sailors even had policians, and there seemed to be plenty of rounds for them. I’m pretty sure that Montwegia has fielded its last CXers, while policy holdout NFA seems to be DOA altogether (sigh). Staunch members of the VCA know how I have been tracking this for many years now. The obituary for policy may be a long way off, but when it is finally written, a lot of people will shake their heads and say, Gee, I thought it died years ago. Without belaboring the issue, it’s not hard to suggest that the very same things that put policy on life support are now working their way over to the LD ward, but that’s another issue altogether. Assuming that there is some sort of mathematical constant for the conservation of debate energy (the total number of debaters remains the same or maybe even grows, but not in the same events—i.e., PF is through the roof), it ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it…<br />
<br />
Anyhow, even the PFers aren’t coming to MHLs, so it’s not the dying of the debate light altogether that's the problem. My personal opinion is that, in a word, coaches don’t care enough about debate as a whole. Everyone fusses and fights over things at the varsity level, but no one is fussing and fighting enough over the incoming flow of noobies. Somehow, I guess, they’ll just sort themselves out while we’re all arguing about obscure rules or how our judge preferences aren’t adding up to our satisfaction. I always take the opposite point of view. Varsity folk are more than capable of sorting themselves out, finding rounds, getting signed up and organized; it’s the young ’uns that need coachean concentration. I invented Academy debate to buffer the middle ground, to hold people between the hysteria of their novice year and the sophistication of their varsity years; there hasn’t been much traction there, either. Some lip service, but that’s about it. If coaches really cared about anyone other than the top, winning debaters, they’d be jumping all over MHLs and Academy events. I hate losing debaters to other school activities, because I think debate is good for people. I especially think debate is good for people who aren’t exactly good debaters. I’ve had my share of naturals who can’t help but win from day one, but while I’m happy for their successes, my greater pride has been in the troopers who don’t have the knack but learn a whole lot of stuff that makes up for not having that knack. Turn just about any coach inside out and he or she will give you that same line. You want to know how the coaches really feel? Take a look at where they are every weekend, and where they sign up their students. <br />
<br />
We’ll probably get together at the MHL Blowout and decide exactly what we’re going to do about the future. I have to admit that I am almost completely convinced to kill the league. We could run an early season event like the first-timers and a workshop without any underlying league. After that, why continue to delude ourselves? Good old Malcolm Bump started the MHL; it seems almost destined that one of his successors end it.<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-4348208813468980282015-01-05T19:30:00.000-05:002015-01-05T19:30:01.249-05:00In which we get all historicalI continue to find it curious that my post in which I mentioned the EILDR (the Eternal Irrelevant LD Resolution, “Resolved: Some b.s. or other that doesn’t matter because you’re just going to argue what you feel like arguing anyhow”) has been viewed about five times as much as any other recent entry. Obviously it touches a nerve. Or maybe schools are just getting ready to vote for it this summer at NatNats and have done with it. <br />
<br />
Having recently read about a tenth of an article on RVIs on the Briefly site, I realize that my lack of knowledge of modern LD and my lack of interest in modern LD are now in perfect alignment. The article, which begins by bemoaning the lack of debating the actual resolutions, goes on (and on) about theory and combating theory and all sorts of analysis of the mechanics of rounds, and I’ll bow to its authority I guess but I can’t say I cared much. Come to think of it, almost all the articles they publish go way inside baseball, talking about the mechanics and leaving me totally cold. I mean, strategy and tactics are one thing, but meta analysis of meta analysis is, well, way too meta for my taste. Even the people who wish we were debating resolutions, like the author of the RVI article, are pulled into the abyss. <br />
<br />
So I look to the history of LD. I wasn’t there at the very beginning, but close enough, I think. Given that the point was to develop an activity different from policy, early LD was very much not policy, and very much concerned with basic ethics. It drew on canonical writers like Locke and Mill, which have always struck me as good starting texts for high school students interested in philosophy, and argued mostly about conflicting rights. Some of the resolutions were remarkably ethereal (e.g., bad government vs. no government) but if nothing else, the rounds were generally accessible. Accessibility was, in fact, a touted virtue, later to be one of the touted virtues of PF. Unfortunately, accessibility is in direct opposition to the average debater’s self-image. The great debater is the master of arcana, not of open discussion. The more arcane the study and the less accessible to the average human, the better and smarter it must be. <br />
<br />
The first move away from the classic LD brought reams of evidence into rounds. It brought the subjects being discussed a little more down to earth, and I don’t think this was necessarily a bad thing. Whether the topics drove the reach toward evidence or the reach toward evidence drove the topics is moot. Topics became more real world, meaning that real-world analysis (i.e., facts) were needed, and people started to have cards in LD rounds. We were still connected to classic ethics, though. This was, to me, a fun period in the life of the activity. You learned some stuff about the world, but continued to analyze it from a workable philosophical position. <br />
<br />
It was probably just a matter of time before people tossed out the canonical ethicists and brought in some sort of replacement. Seeing that much of the judging was done by college students studying philosophy, it makes sense that the philosophy they were studying, and passing down to their judgees (and the people they trained at summer camps), was the fashion of the day. To LD’s great misfortune, the introduction of the replacements for the canon coincided with the last dying gasps of postmodernism in academia. For all practical purposes, academia was moving on past most of the unreadable nonsense of the pomos, but we managed to latch onto it as if it were still all the rage. I think part of this may have been driven by the college students’ yearning for something, well, inaccessible, and the unreadable drivel promoted as philosophy by a lot of pomos filled the bill. If you could claim to make sense of this material, you must be quite the clever one. The fact that much of this material, even if it did make sense, was irrelevant to ethical issues was beside the point. The muddle that resulted in LD rounds was dreadful. You would listen to nonsense that its purveyors were totally convinced was anything but, and when both debaters bought into it, you would just shake your head in sorrow. Of course, they did use some more classic sources, like Nietzsche, for instance. But anyone who knows anything about Nietzsche would probably suggest that, as a guide for ethical behavior, you might want to look elsewhere. Foucault, on the other hand, survived this usage, and it’s probably unfair to toss him in with the Derridas of life. Foucault will be read long after Derrida has become just a footnote (which, probably, was the day before yesterday, at least).<br />
<br />
Pomo finally passed into the discarded old ideas bin, to be replaced by an even worse idea, that it was possible to argue something other than the resolution. Whether or not the pomo debates and all their resulting kritiks led to this is another moot point, but somehow the road was paved with arguments that precede our ability to analyze the resolution. Also, theory, developed to combat abuses, somehow grew up to become an argument virtually aside from abuses. Not to put to fine a point on it, but every interpretation of the resolution is not abusive, but it would seem as if every round were about theory, i.e., abusive readings of the resolution, and there you are. Between theory and a priori arguments, you never have to look at another resolution again, and all of a sudden the EILDR isn’t all that funny. You can pick your favorite subject, draw a tenuous link from the resolution or quickly demonstrate that the resolution is abusive on face, and you’re off. You can now draw on whatever scholarship you like about whatever subject it is you’re promoting. You’re on your own. <br />
<br />
I have no idea whether or not there are good debates going on anymore in LD. No doubt the folks who have pushed for and developed off-topic debating are perfectly content, especially if their non-resolutional goals are serving their personal agendas, e.g., all debates being about racial or gender politics. The question of whether these agenda-oriented debates move the needle on those agendas is yet another moot point, although a very interesting one. We’ll probably get to discussing that eventually.<br />
<br />
EILDR. Sort of sounds like the name of an elf in the <i>The Hobbit</i>. <br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-11517714465583297732015-01-05T12:09:00.001-05:002015-01-05T12:09:46.224-05:00In which we are happy to find new CPsFirst day back, and as always, the DJ provides the crappy prizes most coaches can only dream of.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVaKEQ9kAS8x6u_IDbWE7vuEBYP108wTmKEoz3kGJqx_JpXzOaPLbMSycyzgduOErKzeiMe-JQdvnRsOV8zkwetLwrxwsgJg6XZU_5tZgn3jHRglD9vkEDY2P4QMmNo7bKRgG_DQ/s1600/night.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVaKEQ9kAS8x6u_IDbWE7vuEBYP108wTmKEoz3kGJqx_JpXzOaPLbMSycyzgduOErKzeiMe-JQdvnRsOV8zkwetLwrxwsgJg6XZU_5tZgn3jHRglD9vkEDY2P4QMmNo7bKRgG_DQ/s320/night.jpg" /></a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-72816677955427026092014-12-30T15:02:00.001-05:002014-12-30T15:02:43.650-05:00In which we prefI have a tournament every weekend between next week and the middle of March. Every weekend. Most of them are big galumphing things, and all of them are unique. I mean, you can’t compare the single flights of e-balloted VLD at Newark to the it’s-our-first-trip-off-the-hog-farm mania of Columbia. Or the nuttiness of the MHL Blowout (which, for all I know, will blow out the MHL permanently) to the seriousness of Bigle X, or the switchback judging of Scarsdale to the Black Hole of Byram’s Academy Comeback (when Kaz will be in Pennsylvania, which apparently is as far away as she could get on such short notice). I’ll find someone to grab into tab there, but I’ll probably have to resort to very serious threats. “Your teams will never debate again at any tournament I tab!” That one works once in a while, although there have been coaches who have taken me at my word and used the threat as an excuse to quit altogether and get back all their weekends back, once and for all. Lucky bastids.<br />
<br />
Newark is the first of this run. I’ve been working that one since the beginning of my tabbing days, fresh off the MHL conveyor belt. Newark used to have its two-day on a normal schedule, with an MHL joining them on Saturday. Depending on the size of the invitational, we had this weird venue back in the day. There was this school within walking distance of East Side, I think it was a grammar school, where everything was Lilliputian and we were tabbing in some sort of closet and you felt totally cut off from the real world, except that Jonathan brought in really good food for lunch. Since the move to the new Science building, Newark has been a joy, with a very nice tab room complete with microwave (the difference at any tournament between staring at the cold judges’ lounge food bleakly and grabbing it lustily for a little heating up and a fine feast—it’s all in the steam rising from the plate) and private bathroom. Jonathan backloads the LD division with enough judges to single flight, which moves things along admirably. This time—a first—we’ll be using MJP. JA has been vocally against this for a while, but seems to have either been won over or simply given in. He offers one wrinkle, though, which I’m surprised more folks haven’t taken me up on when I’ve offered it in the past. The priority will be 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, 2-3, 1-2, 4-4, 5-5. That is, 2-3 prioritized over 1-2. As JA says, it’s a fairer match debating with your 3 in front of your opponent’s 2 than with your 2 in front of your opponent’s 1. As I say, I’ve offered this in the past, but no one raised their hand. Not that it happens all that often; we usually cover everything with mutual 1s and 2s, as I’ve explained in the past. But if you happen to be a school that has, shall we say, unique prefs, this may be more important to you. I mean, there are some schools that haven’t gotten a mutual 1 since the Carter Administration because they simply don’t have any 1s in common with anyone else in the field. Each of these unhappy families is unhappy in its own way, and it doesn’t seem to affect their success. Of course, people take mutuality way too seriously, as if the slightest shade off somehow guarantees a loss, which, again, I’ve discussed in the past as ridiculous. The best debaters win rounds in front of any judges, and the best coaches train their debaters to do so. Second-rate coaches spend their prep time complaining to tab. So be it. <br />
<br />
I have heard tell, nevertheless, of folks who game the MJP system. Those who have tried to explain this to me have said that they mark some of their 1s as 2s or 3s or something like that, which might work if their round was the only one being scheduled, but honestly, with all the various restraints and priorities and whatnot, I think they’re living in the proverbial fool’s paradise. Or I am. Whatever. I only have one LDer left, a lone, lorn sophomore, and I do his prefs thus: people who I know hate me get struck. People who do a lot of judging get 1s and 2s. People whose first name is Mr. get 3-5 (because my LDer thinks he’s cutting edge, and no one name Mr. has ever noticed a spike on the flow since the beginning of time). That’s about it. My guy does okay. But, as has been pointed out to me often, what do I know?<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-6364189559645673392014-12-24T11:45:00.000-05:002014-12-24T11:45:21.991-05:00In which we take advantage of the few minutes with nothing to do before we're off to see Top FiveI’m looking at a killer bunch of weekends beginning with Newark and ending with Penn. Each one has its own unique issues.<br />
<br />
Newark is fairly straightforward, except for some reason there is an awful lot of detritus on the tabroom setup. I can’t really figure out why. Assuming that they simply cloned last year’s tournament, which we ran on tabroom, it should just bring in last year’s tournament. Instead, it seems to have brought in every tournament known to man, with myriad scheduling slots on the wrong day and none on the right day, plus a rather bizarre assortment of sites and rooms. Cleaning this up is just busy work, but it needs to be done. No big deal, just time consuming. Meanwhile Jonathan has thrown in the towel and is using MJP for the first time. Given that he’s doing single flights, he’s a bit worried how things will parse out, but my guess is that the large number of judges required will keep things the way they ought to be. <br />
<br />
Then there’s Lexington. The good news here is that I’m not going to touch it. If CP can’t set up a tournament correctly, there’s no hope for the rest of us. And I’m curious to see how he sets up what. As a rule I should be doing what he does (I think), otherwise I get myself into trouble. Since for better or worse I’m probably Patient Zero, this can be an object lesson. (No, I’m not thinking what you think I’m thinking. I am not hoping for it not to work. I’m a better person than that. I’m hoping that not only does it not work, but it takes down all of Lexington HS, every ISP in a fifty mile surrounding radius, and either North Korea or Sony, whichever needs it most. And then I’ll turn to CP and say, “I didn’t touch it!”)<br />
<br />
Following this is the Gem of Harlem. For which, at the moment, we have no rooms. No problem. We have days before this becomes an issue. <br />
<br />
Last year’s Byram Hills Battle of the Five Wifi Armies has me shaking in my boots for this one. All I remember of that tournament is Kaz and I, lanterns in hand, stumbling in the dark as the winds and rain raged about us, searching for a room, any room, that had even marginal cell phone reception, given that the school turned off the internet for the weekend. I have been assured that in the interim they have installed wifi service to die for. Having almost died for lack of it last year, all I can do is hope.<br />
<br />
Then there’s a breather at Scarsdale. We can let JV do the fire breathing and relax and enjoy one of our favorite events. Followed by the Quakers, who will be a whole ‘nuther story, but at the moment, are set up just fine. <br />
<br />
And with that, a Merry Christmas to you too. <br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-20261091325713524412014-12-22T16:10:00.001-05:002014-12-22T16:11:07.248-05:00In which we rub its nasty little bellyI remember very clearly when I first started working in tab rooms how Richard Sodikow would run things from his clunky old Macintosh (clunky, that is, compared to the Macs of today). He sat on the closest thing in the given tab room to the throne therein, barking orders to his assembled myrmidons, typing away. Food would be brought in on silver trays from the judges’ lounge by a never ending parade of eunuchs, although I may be misremembering that last bit. But then every now and then there would be a stop in all activity when Soddie pressed the button to pair the next round. Everyone would hold their collective breath, waiting. And here was the thing. To make the round pair successfully—no certainty in those days of TR for the Mac—Soddie would slowly rotate his finger on the touchpad of the computer, making little continuous little circles until the program finally output the completed schematic. The collective breath of the room would exhale, Soddie would lift his finger, the parade of aphrodisiacs from the judges’ lounge would resume, the printer would start chugging away, and the tournament would continue apace until the next pairing.<br />
<br />
I never questioned anyone about that circling finger, but I noticed that Soddie wasn’t the only one to do it. I just accepted it as part of the magic of making a tournament happen. Maybe it was a Mac thing. You had to rub the belly of the beast to make it purr, it seemed. When Jules and the Nostrumite wrote this up in Nostrum, they used the metaphor of sacrificing a goat to explain what happened in the sanctum sanctorum of the tab room. That seemed to be a reasonable comparison. The tab rooms were always closed, no one was allowed in and no one ever came out, information was sealed, and as often as not, things broke down and the sacrifices, so to speak, didn’t always satisfy the anger of the gods. So it went. <br />
<br />
All of which is prelude to my oversight in not bringing a goat with me to the CFL tournament last Saturday, the legendary Regis Kristmas Klassik (AKA the Christmas Chlassich). A timely sacrifice could have been very helpful. The thing is, it turns out that tabroom.com needs its nasty little belly rubbed just as much as the old TR for the Mac. As I sauntered into the tab room Saturday after the registration closed (theoretically, as it seemed as if everyone who knew last week how to check in automatically had forgotten, and I had to pull teeth to find out who, exactly, had shown up that day) and confidently sat down at the computer, I encountered the first really disastrous inability to get things done correctly. The rounds that we were able to pair used rooms from the wrong pools. At least one round wouldn’t pair at all. According to CP, who, fortunately, was available, the former problem arose from my not rubbing the belly of the beast after making the room pools. I was supposed to save all the individual schedules again. Oh, yeah. That’s obvious. If you don’t do things in the right albeit secret order, they don’t get done. Which means if, for no particular reason, you’ve been doing it “correctly” in the past and this time you don’t, you have your friend James from Bro Tech manually enter the correct rooms (which, at least, you’ve learned to print out in advance for just such a contingency) while you try to figure out why this one particular division won’t double-flight. Well, in that case, a button I didn’t even know existed was clicked. Needless to say, CP would insist that I had pressed that button, and just as needless to say, I would insist that I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole dancer. Since I blog more than he does, even when I'm not blogging much, it is obvious that I am right and he is wrong.<br />
<br />
A half hour later than our proposed start, we kicked things off. The good news is that we were only running three rounds, and until all the policy judges decided to go to one of the local gin mills before round 3—yes, seriously, they did all disappear for no reason whatsoever, given the fact that they were given a half hour break, minimum, for lunch—we never got more than that half hour off the mark. Curiously, aside from our starting friction, this event also became quickly identifiable as the Tournament of the Disappearing Maverick. First of all, we started out with mavericks up the wazoo. Then there would be more mavericks. Then there were mavericks who were turning into teams with two unique individuals, then they were one again, and then they were quitting the tournament, but then they wanted to come back, or leave again, or whatever. As a rule, I’m okay with mavericks at events like this, at it is better to debate with a handicap than to stay home and play Minecraft, but this time out, it seemed as if we had more lone motherless dogies than bona fide pairs, but in ever-recombining configurations. Go figure. <br />
<br />
Anyhow, at the end of the day, the day ended (if there’s one mindless phrase I really hate, it’s “at the end of the day,” but here I'm using it literally, so the usage is excusable). Trophies were distributed, my little team of novices placed nicely, my judge picked up all her ballots, and I stuffed my pockets with the extra medals to give to Catholic Charlie next time I see him, if not before. Which meant that, for the next two weeks, I have no debates and, aside from a boatload of reading, no DJ. <br />
<br />
I rewarded myself for this by upgrading my Spotify. I’m typing this while listening to the UK cast of “She Loves Me.” <br />
<br />
Life is good. Sometimes. <br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7552601.post-29105369433736145532014-12-18T19:30:00.000-05:002014-12-18T19:30:00.706-05:00In which we make an immodest proposal amidst a cascade of beansSomebody at the DJ has been cleaning out their closets. Which means I’ve just acquired as many crappy prizes as I can carry at one time. Big boxes o’ junk appear in the break room, and people grab them up as if they’re hiding the Ebola virus; in other words, for reasons that are hard to explain, I’m about the only one around here who wants “Ukulele Ike Sings Again.” Then again, old Cliff (his real name) voiced a certain iconic cricket back in the day, so how can I resist? This is why you want to speak well at Bump. From the DJ to the C.P. Closet at the chez to the Bump tournament to your very own assigned space in your very own house, if you have one. (Some kids just get piled one on top of the other in the basement. At least, that’s what they do in Scarsdale. I can’t speak for other places.) These are the best crappy prizes money couldn’t buy if it wanted to.<br />
<br />
“Crappy prizes chosen at random, especially for you.” Ah, yes…<br />
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The Regis Kristmas Klassik (AKA the Christmas Chlassich) seems to have filled up suitably. I’ll have to meld the JV and V LDers to make them happen, I think, but otherwise it’s quite robust. Novice PF especially is on the lively side. The northeast will be among the last to loosen the reins on LD, but even so, PF is making its move. <br />
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In related news, I understand that next year the NSDA, having adopted my idea for the modest novice topic, will be adopting my comparable idea for varsity LD. There will just be one LD topic from now on, and it will repeat at every tournament until the end of time: “Resolved: Some b.s. or other that doesn’t matter because you’re just going to argue what you feel like arguing anyhow.” I’m calling it the E.I.L.D.R., the Eternal Irrelevant LD Resolution. Given that this is de facto what we’re doing already, why not just cut to the chase? <br />
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The Sailor entry this weekend has shrunk to just my newbies. One of them, by the way, was this year’s winner in Winter Bean Trivia. We did it Tuesday night, limiting it to the three categories of food, Disney and 60s music. Before long I jettisoned the music category, since although Capt Jake had suggested it, it turns out that no one on the team knows anything about the 60s except that Beatles might have recorded a song or two in them. Of course, one of the teams could name only a single Disney mouse. Timothy. Given that you get a bean per mouse, and that, uh, the corporate gestalt is a certain <i>mus musculus</i> creature, this had to be the nadir of the evening’s intellectual prowess. It didn’t match the unforgettable answer from years ago that the lead Muppet character was Hermit the Crab, but it comes close. <br />
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