Summer Break
Now that finals have finished and summer is here I wanted to let everyone know the posts will be a bit more sporadic over the summer months.
Which leads me to a question – what do you recommend to do over summer with respect to NFA-LD? We know the general topic and the 5 potential topics so you could get started on research. However, I am a big proponent on taking at least SOME time off after each year to decompress and relax a bit.
Any good generic resources anyone has found so far? Here is the blog from the U.S. Sec of Transportation that may be a good place to start reading.
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Comments
I am beginning with the issue most dominant at the end of last year: T.
At the outset, I am searching all of the interpretations of the word “reform” – both as a verb and a noun. I am also pursuing the various definitions/connotations of the words “transportation” and “infrastructure.” Last, but certainly not least, I am examining various definitions/connotations of phrases (i.e., “transportation policy”) as well as individual words.
Two other preliminary thoughts:
(1) Until someone persuades me to the contrary (and that is certainly possible), I am not going to be satisfied as a judge with overly-brief, flippant Affirmative Plans.
In these days of Obama-PAYGO and the “great debate” over “generational theft,” I do not want to hear people sloughing off the cost of their Plans (or Counterplans) with happy platitudes like “normal means.” Since September of last year, NOTHING about Federal fiscal and monetary policy has been “normal,” and the financing of any kind of Federal program has become an 800-TON gorilla.
(2) Whichever one of the fab five topics that is chosen this August will be as broad as last year’s topic was narrow – especially with all of this year’s high school policy files floating around. Caveat emptor…
I’m around to talk NFA-LD with anyone who wants to chat: sonofshasta1970@yahoo.com
I am going to spend my summer adjusting all the headings on my backfiles from “McClatchy HS” or “Gonzaga Debate Institute” to “UCLA.” My 225-page warming file and my 280-page hegemony file, for instance. Fun.
I’m kind of hoping the energy efficiency topic is chosen because all my favorite disads from this year link HARD into those cases, and I already have a bunch of topical affirmatives to pick from.
Also Mike Miller, off your #1 – the problem with in-depth plan texts is that you’re going to be hard pressed to find a solvency advocate who reaches the level of specification needed to satisfy your standards. It’s easy to find author X who says Y is good and should be promoted through policy Z. It’s a hell of a lot harder to find solvency author X who says Y is good, and also says it should be promoted through mandate Z, by agent A, through enforcement mechanism B, and by funding mechanism C and funding amount D. You effectively limit out creative cases that don’t have really specific literature bases.
As long as a plan text is concise enough that you can debate the overall merits of the policy in-depth, there’s no real benefit to be derived by solidfying links to spending/fiscal restraint disads at the expense of core aff ground.
I think there is a case for having more specific plan texts this year. It would be nice, as op, to know what the heck you are trying to do with more specificity.
On the other hand, funding DA’s are going to be nothing more then “non-unique, gov spent 1trillion in bailouts” “Link Turn, we make economy better by increasing jobs and safety so people can eat and don’t die/get injured while traveling” or just go for Keynesian economics “any spending is good spending”. I really don’t see the need for it… that’s just me. I guess you should know how much your plan is going to cost, roughly.
Not to mention, I will slit my wrists if I have to do the alt nrg cars bs. I am rather sure that I wont participate in LD… assuming my coach doesn’t find a way to make me.
Nick:
You make an excellent point, and thereby raise a highly significant issue. In the now three years that I have been floundering about trying to get “back into debate,” I have noticed that the biggest difference between debate now and debate as it was in the “the old days” (for me, circa 1966*-1983) is not the spread, or the K, or even performance, but the revolution in plan-drafting (or lack thereof).
Moreover, I have found that, as the ultimate irony, this appears to arise from a weird self-loathing and/or inferiority complex within the debate community itself. Debaters (and their coaches) at both the college high school levels seem to lack any confidence in their owm ability to write new Constitutions, laws, and regulations.
Back when I was a little whipperspreader, late Spring and early Summer was the time in which the debate community engaged in brainstorming re: Plans. I know from personal observation that the Ungers and Zarefskys, etc. didn’t depend upon “the literature” and/or some “solvency advocate(s)” in academe and/or politics (or even philosophy)to come up with plans – they wrote their own.
Indeed, what made college and high school debate fun to participate in was that you could literally “dream of things that never were, and ask ‘Why not?’.” This debate-sanctioned right to fantasize about remaking the world is what puts the fun in fiat.
Debaters should dare to be bold, and truly radical (or reactionary). In 1935 the best minds in physics dismissed the very idea of the atmoc bomb as “mere moonshine.” Ten years later, atomic bombs were being dropped on Japan.
So I urge this community to dare to dream.
Pick a target date and ban all non-defense transportation using carbon-based fuels as of that date.
Or pick a date and make all roads, streets, and freeways “toll roads” as of that date.
Or nationalize – truly nationalize – the transportation industry in the United States (“freedomways” not “freeways”), and build a green transportation system.
Or eliminate the AVF, establish a program of national public service, and therein create a massive public works program (a combination of The WPA and the Autobahn) to rebuild all of the crumbling roads and bridges in this country (attacking poverty, employment and transportation needs simultaneously).
Or create a real-life “starfleet,” with emphasis of saving humanity by creating warp drive (Zephram Cochran is supposed to do this by 2063 – only 54 years from now) and tranporter technology (circa 2150 according to Canon).
And to finance this, you have the right to completely rewrite U.S. fiscal policy. Throw out the Tax Code and start over.
“Normal means” is just another name for the Status Quo. CREATE – don’t just copy!
* It just occurred to me that I started debating about three years before Armstrong set foot on the Moon [sigh...]. He did this, BTW, six moinths AHEAD of the target date set by JFK in 1961, when no one really had a clue as to how to get there and back.
So, 2 years ago in LD I had a fun idea. There was a big o’ lake in Africa where there was lots and lots of water, guess which one.
However,about 200 miles away from that lake there was close to no water, kinda sucks.
To me, it is obvious that they needed water. So, I gave it to them. I wrote a 1ac to build a canal from point A to point B. I never heard the phrase “No solvency advocate” so many time in my life, lol.
The (de)evolution of policy makes these fun cases a lot harder to run because of the expectations.
No one had any DA’s on it, all they could do was run T and say not fair/no solvency advocate. Oh, and someone ran Rules violation because I used short sites Griffin ’07 etc.
Debaters know how to write innovative cases we are just discouraged from it.
Nerdy – I know there is much truth in what you say. However…
There is at least one NFA-LD judge (me) who encourages innovation. I suspect there are others, but in the era of flame-mail induced conformity, they may be reluctant to speak out. Let us hope this changes.
Moreover, at least in the SoCal region, the rules and customs of NFA-LD are in a state of flux. Let us boldly go where no one has gone before.
Miller out.
so write a case that I can run 3-4 times a year?
while that is something I would do… IDK
I think I have learned a lot after running the water-ways case so I may be able to pull it off a few more times then I think but I have 1 month to read 11 books which, along with my dentist bill, stack to almost exactly 1 foot tall… we will see how I fair with that before I go and kill myself writing a pet case.
I think a lot of the summer is going to be trying to find stuff that links to everything/anything that would outweigh case…
It would be so easy to run squirrels on any of the possible res’ that no one could even find neg stuff on.
I do not see how this will not be a year of the ‘K’ in so-cal LD. Since we have pushback from sources about a case list (yes, I believe in I’ll show you mine if you show me yours) I do not see any reason why I should play by that mentality and not run screwy stuff that doesn’t link.
shotgun strat ftw!
SAD NEWS – GOOD EVIDENCE.
Alas, today’s front pages – both print and cybernetic – have become the best place to start researching on the transportation topic.
Per the Associated Press this morning, according to the NTSB, one of the subway trains that was involved in yesterday’s crash in D.C. was supposed to have been phased out as unsafe in 2006. This tragedy is a glaring example of how America’s public transportation problems have been overlooked and unaddressed.
What do people think about paperless debates?
I am working on adapting witman’s method of paperless debating for policy as a method for LD here in So-Cal. So far so good as a preliminary set up.
The only problem with the system is that if the other people don’t have a laptop then it is useless….. Are there enough debaters out there that have laptops besides myself?
The system is foolproof and Whitman went a whole year with 1st round quals to NDT and no issues that didn’t come from themselves. I know that policy has a higher probability of laptops being present but it would be nice to see how you all feel.
Either way, I will be working on a way for me to use my laptop in rounds more efficiently. Doing the work electronically then repeating it manually doesn’t seem to foot the bill for me though…
Check out the website for UC Davis’ INSTITUTE OF TRANSPORTATION STUDIES. Lots of good (FREE!) stuff here.
http://www.its.ucdavis.edu/index.php
On a selfish note, I hope UC Davis doesn’t jump into NFA-LD debate (at least this year). From the looks of this website, they could kick all of our butts… but good. 
As a former political science major, and a person who has taught American history and American government extensively, I have told avoid wincing almost every time I hear some debater launch into a “political capital” and/or other “politics” type of argument. I commend this article to anyone and everyone for reference when the term “political capital” is raised.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/zelizer.obama.polls/index.html
Correction: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/30/zelizer.obama.polls/index.html
And how about getting an “edit” option for this board?
An article of interest (on “Transportation Fatalities”) from a website you probably want to bookmark and monitor throughout the season.
I’m already working on researching both the local and federal government processes on how to they work together to get funds to improve/maintain transportation. I’m also working on a project for my internship where my main focus will be on transportation. I think the US Sec of Transportation is a good place to start. But thomas.gov is a good place to start as well as the local library.