Archive for October, 2007

Malaria Article in the NYT

Great article on malaria nets – helpful for those running DDT or those going neg against it!
Here is the brief I created using the card cutter feature available on the site here
Malaria nets.doc
Malaria nets.pdf

AT Marse – In defense of Kritiks in NFA-LD

Forgive the title of the post, just trying to have a little fun. I don’t have too much of a problem with the things that Mike Marse is advocating (and similarly Danny Cantrell in his comment), but I wanted to provide an alternative viewpoint.
I don’t think that ALL kritiks are against the NFA-LD rules.
The [...]

Kritik Theory

I wanted to explain what I believe about Kritiks, and hopefully start a discussion that will lead to some understanding about this realm of debate theory. Why now? This last weekend at the California Double-Up some of my students (the ones who don’t also do CEDA) ran into their first kritiks.
So, what is [...]

NFA LD Results From the California Double Up

Congrats to the following for advancing to elimination rounds!
Arizona State: Josh Whitaker
Northern Arizona: Antonio De La Garza, Adam Fluke, Zach Freels
San Diego Christian: Darren Burdett
Univ of CA at SD: Zachary Schultz
Univ of Nev, Reno: Matt Hogan
Univ of the Pacific: Broc Maples, Emily Sheldon, Richard Aragon, Raymond Candler, Steve Farias, Will Chamberlain

Tournament Attendance and Planning

The purpose of this post is to provide some direction and guidance for tournament selection and participation in the activity as a whole. I write this post with the assumption that larger tournaments in both numbers and teams present on the whole provide a better learning environment for LD.
On California (Including close surrounding areas… [...]

SoCal-LD.net Cal Baptist NFA-LD Debate Tournament Results

Thanks to Mike Marse for hosting what was probably the first NFA-LD only debate tournaments on the west coast! Teams from
Cal Baptist, Cerritos, Palomar and Riverside competed at the tournament which had 11 competitors. Everyone learned a lot and got some great early season rounds under their belts.
Congratulations to Palomar for closing out [...]

An Idea for Practice Debates

I’ve spent a lot of time in my 7 years of coaching trying to come up with ways to make practice debates more productive and one in particular has been the most helpful. One of the problems I’ve had with practice debates is that they aren’t always productive because the aff might be unique [...]

Topic Area Background

The LD Camp went very well, with 16 students from 4 schools in attendance. Not bad for the first year of anything that doesn’t give away trophies. Anyway, among the highlights was a discussion of delivery by Prof. Bill Sparks of Cerritos College, who (among other things) explained the difference between strategies that [...]

Evidence Dump

Here are some files that we’ve put together over the past two tournaments. Almost all of these were developed from the free NDCA evidence. Hope everyone does well at the Todd Lewis this weekend!!!

Child Soldiers 1AC
Child Soldiers – AFF Responses
China DA Shell
DDT Bad File
Drought Insurance 1AC
Drought Insurance Aff Answers
Drought Insurance – Neg [...]

New Feature – SoCal-LD.net Card Cutter – Free for two weeks

We are proud to announce a new feature available at SoCal-LD.net – an online card cutter tool. This feature will allow you to easily create briefs for cards you are cutting online (or that you type in from a hardcopy). The program will allow you to save as many cards in a brief [...]

Judges: The Role of Cross-Examination

One aspect that significantly differs from NPDA to NFA-LD debate is cross-examination. Following the first two constructive speeches there is a 3 minute period where the debaters can ask each other questions. Interestingly, I can find no reference to cross-examination in the official NFA-LD rules.
The National Forensics Journal has many articles on [...]

Concordia Invitational – NFA-LD Results

Congratulations to the following debaters for making it to the elimination rounds:
Cerritos TB – Tariq Bruno
Univ of Pacific SF – Steve Farias
Univ of Pacific ES – Emily Sheldon
Univ of Pacific WC – Will Chamberlain
Semifinalist:
Cerritos TB
Univ of Pacific ES
2nd Place:
Univ of Pacific WC
1st Place
Univ of Pacific SF
Thanks to Konrad for hosting the division at the tournament.