Google Alerts – the lazy research technique
At the RCC debate camp I mentioned briefly the ability to sign up for google alerts to do some of your research for you. I thought it might be helpful to explain how to do this in more detail.
Here is a video explaining how to use google alerts generally:
Some of my thoughts on the options:
Search Term: Use the same process you do as searching in google. You can place quotation marks around phrases to receive the exact phrase (like “transportation infrastructure”).
Type: I’d limit the type of alerts to news only. That way you can use this service to search the major news wires (AP/Reuters) and newspapers available on google news. If you search everything you are likely to be overloaded with information.
How often: Once a week is the best setting. I’ve gotten the alerts daily and as-it-happens and you quickly get overwhelmed with emails. Once a week will allow you to spend about 10-15 minutes reviewing the email every week and spot anything that would be helpful.
If you do not have a google account:
Enter your email address and you are done. While you can not log in to the google alert site to manage alerts in the future if you wanted to delete one there will be a link at the bottom of your alert email allowing you to delete the alert. You will have to verify your email before you get alerts.
If you have a google account:
Sign in, and setup the alerts. It is really quite easy. This will allow you to better manage the alerts rather than the no google account option above.
One of the great benefits of this service is that you can get updates regarding your affirmative case and your opponents affirmative case. Last year this proved very helpful as we had an alert setup for “travel ban” and as soon as the news started coming out that the ban was about to be lifted we had the news delivered to our inbox.
Here is what an alert will look like once you start receiving the emails:
Here is the FAQ for Google Alerts with more information.
As you can see, there are perhaps some helpful articles in there but lots of irrelevant ones. That’s why I recommend using the once a week setting which will allow you to more quickly jump through the irrelevant sections.
Sources: One complaint I’ve had with google news is that the sources are not always the best in the world. As with any google search, I’ve always recommended it as a good place to start your research, not end it. By that, I mean, use this to get ideas on what to research and then go to the more credible sources to get more information. For example, I do not know credible the “Examiner” would be in a round talking about small, disadvantaged businesses, but the ideas in that article may help you find better evidence in a more credible source.
Any suggestions on search terms to use for this year? Do you know of any other services like Google Alerts that can help people research?
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
Did anyone else see “The Crumbling of America” on the History Channel last night? (You get tired of watching the fire news and the Dodgers.)
I think this is “must-see TV” for EVERYONE – coaches and “circuit” judges – as well as debaters!
http://www.history.com/shows.do?action=detail&episodeId=452430
Google Alerts are a great resource for disadvantage uniqueness, not so much for general research. If you need constant updates on stuff like bizcon, econ, and politics disads, Google Alerts is absolutely an excellent tool. However, beyond that, the sources aren’t really geared towards in-depth and well-warranted argumentation with limits their usefulness.
Check this site for good stuff – on a variety of different issues – every morning.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/
And I’m going to suggesting funding plans by pulling the U.S. out of Afghanistan. If there’s a George Will, there’s a way! 
MHM – please do, because I will cut a 50 page Afghan Deployment Good file and read it for 7 minutes in the 1NC. That’s how dumb an idea it is.
Nick: You don’t think I (we) can’t counter with killer stuff on Afghanistan deployment = EOW?
But hey, if the debate came down to “Afghanistan Bad” vs. “Afghanistan Good” that would be a massive improvement over tea, tea, tea… and now a little more tea. Mmmm…K?
P.S. [TO ALL] Don’t let anyone kid you… it is good to be alive. 
(An explanation for my euphoria amid the flames.)
Re funding: I have nothing against $-spec per se. I just would consider any “advantages” directly derived from withdrawing from Afghanistan (or Iraq) to be extra-topical. (In other words, “peace” and/or “soft power” advantages would be no-no’s; but again, it depends upon what’s argued in the round.)
Indeed, I think that “financial infrastructure” is a subset of “transportation infrastructure,” so what an Aff. does with financing [eg. "congestion pricing," or VMT] will have to be judged on a case-by-case basis.
More later when the fire danger has finally passed. (We’re OK, but some other GC folks are still threatened.)
MHM, you do realize that if at any time you claim what you are cutting is *good*, you are automatically extra-T because you are claiming offense off of nontopical planks of the plan, right?
The fact that you don’t run it as an advantage per se is irrelevant. By running arguments like “Afghan withdrawal good” in any shape or form – EVEN IF IT’S AN ANSWER TO A NEGATIVE ARGUMENT – you’re doomed because you’re extra-T.
The negative can run 7 minutes of “Afghan withdrawal bad” and the only argument you will be allowed to make and still be topical are defensive arguments. And we all know how those kind of debates are going to play out.
At the risk of stating what should be obvious: a debater is “allowed” to argue whatever she/he wishes. The judge might buy it… or not (consider the differences in judging philosophy between Dr. K and AFA Brandon, for example).
At one point in time the spread, the K, and performance debate were all considered to be “disallowed.” People were bold. And fortune favors the brave.
Don’t allow yourself to become the prisoner of your own orthodoxy; there are enough barriers in life as it is.
[Please forgive me - I always wax philosophical after receiving six pints of new blood.]
Oh, sure, a debater can argue whatever he/she wishes. I’m mean, theoretically, I’m “allowed” to get up in front of a judge and start screaming choice swear words at the top of my lungs for 30 seconds. Does that make it a good idea? No.
Same applies here. You’re “allowed” to present as many extra-topical, theoretically bankrupt arguments as you want, but I’ll simply be obliged to utterly obliterate you on it.
Nick. So you think that reform does not include funding reform? Which means that you are stuck with the 70 billion in the transportation department’s budget?
I’ll bite – in what way is financial/funding topical under this topic? In what way does that reform the actual infrastructure? At best, it is horribly effects topical. For example, if we reform the gas tax to double it’s current rate that increases available money. That available money is then spent on reforming the actual infrastructure? That would be my definition of effects-topicality.
This topic seems really straightforward to me – you gotta do something to the domestic transportation infrastructure. The difference between “transportation policy” and “transportation infrastructure” is both an important and striking difference in the topic. I do not see why, given the huge Aff area under my interpretation, why it would be either good or advantageous for the community to include additional areas that are not clearly infrastructure related. If someone can point to a definition of “domestic transportation infrastructure” that says it equals our tax policy I would be much obliged. It would seem that would be our “domestic transportation infrastructure funding policy” not “transportation infrastructure.”
As an intro – I am excited that the APU/CUI tournament will be hosting LD once again!
Now, back to being the normal me you all expect (sorry).
1st, funding is transportation infrastructure related.
So, according to the capitalist mindset of our country – everything we do can be fixed with money. Therefore, if we were to reform transportation infrastructure, the only way that we can do so is with money. If said cash were to come from pre-existing funds, aka normal means, then you believe that is ok. However, because we want to do what the USFG actually does (deficit spend, take funds from other places, or just increase taxes) we are extra-topical? That doesn’t make as much sense as running a topical cp in front of MHM without a reason to do so.
Also, (MHM spoke briefly on this at the camp) if you improve the structure we have now, that is not reform. That is more of the same. To reform you have to change the way the system works. The system works under a financial belief which can be reformed by taking funding from (x) instead of (y). I wrote a whole case on this idea and e-mailed it to a bunch of people. It is a legit idea to reform T/I by reforming the way the funding occurs. It is just as legit to add funding plank.
2nd, if we just waved a fiat wand and decided to deficit spend the whole amount of what we need to fix our country’s T/I we would be a lot better off. However, that wouldn’t happen. The GOP would demand to know where the cash is coming from. The Dems would want to increase taxes. The GOP would want to cut spending on social services and let people die. These are entirely real-world examples.
The better argument to go for is that the resolution says we should reform Domestic T/I. The word reform means ‘make changes for improvement in order to remove abuse and injustices’ according to the def db on the site. To make any improvement there must be funding. In order for funding to occur the aff gets access to decide what it should be. If we don’t then the big-bad-neg will get up and do it for us in the next speech. I can already see it now: UQ – spending low now Link – you spend IL – causes econ collapse imp – Lisa Lampanelli stops being funny! Yes, I know, a fate much worse then nuclear war.
This topic is as straightforward a a paperclip. There IS a HUGEHUGEHUGE aff skew with this topic. However, I do not see why the aff cannot plan spike out of a DA they know is coming if it is funding related… Yup, lets let aff teams be more abusive (I am not sure if I am being sarcastic or not, I may never know).
3rd, what is the difference between saying funding through normal means and funding from a .05% cut in our nuclear program?
When it comes to the funding plank – that is all it is, if you get an advantage from it you lose. However, if someone brings up a DA against the funding plank you can respond to that however you want. Explain why they can’t Nick. I don’t get the reasoning from the blip.
If you believe that it is not topical to specify funding then I get to no-link your DAs because they are non-topical, deal?
Breakdown: spec the funding = topical. Spec the funding via a tradeoff, then say whatever is being cut is bad: extra topical.
Here’s the reasoning: for all intents and purposes, aff offense and advantages can be considered to to be interchangeable terms.
Let’s say the aff has a funding plank to tradeoff with a couple of F-22′s. The neg runs a disad that says F-22′s are good, key to hegemony or something like that. The aff responds by saying F-22′s are bad, maybe they provoke Chinese aggression or something (I’m just making stuff up).
At this point, the aff is claiming “F-22′s bad” as an advantage to passing the plan. The neg therefore must prove not only that his other disadvantages outweigh the advantages presented in the 1AC, but ALSO that they outweigh the new “F-22′s bad” argument made in the 1AR. However, cutting funding for F-22′s is irrelevant to transportation infrastructure and is blatantly non-topical, which in turn makes the aff plan extra-topical.
The aff can respond to such funding disads with defensive arguments (i.e. F-22′s not key to hege, F-22′s don’t work). Those are fine because they’re not advantages. Offensive arguments, on the other hand, don’t fly.
Also, how can the aff spike out of disads by spec’ing the funding? Most tradeoff disads say that “normal means is that X will be cut to pay for the plan.” If the aff specs funding, the links simply go away and the disads are never run in the first place. Tradeoff disads are pretty crappy arguments in general, anyway, so I’m not sure what the big loss is.
Lastly, when you say “I get to no-link your DAs because they are non-topical,” I have no clue what you’re saying here, could you clarify so I can respond?
responding to nerdy db8r on September 2, 2009 @ 12:36 am
1a. Thanks for your response but it is entirely nonresponsive. This is just rehashing the same funding debate we had on the previous post. As I tried to make clear on that post many times I firmly believe the affirmative must defend the spending of any money through its plan whether it be through normal means or a funding spike. If I do the STA act case I posted on here and it’s going to cost a billion dollars I should have to defend that spending a billion on the STA act is worth any tradeoff DISADVANTAGE that the negative can come up with. Because the spending consequences are best debated within the framework of a disadvantage. Fiat allows the affirmative to pass the plan. The disadvantage debate allow us to access what would happen in the world if plan passes. So, I pass a plan that costs a billion – is that worth the negative consequences? That’s for the negative to present.
1b. your argument regarding capitalist america is completely unrelated to this particular topic – it is simply an indict of any plan and any resolution. I do not contend that an affirmative is limited to existing funds – just that a plan to deal with financial infrastructure is at best effects topical. It does nothing to reform the transportation infrastructure except by an effect of the plan (ie, raising more money). The chain of effects-topicality seems very easy to argue. Your plan, in a vacuum, does NOTHING to transportation infrastructure. Raising the gas tax does 0, zilch, nada, to change anything infrastructure related. Raising the gas tax will not pave one highway, rebuild a single bridge, build one new airport, etc… Instead, it increases the money going to the USFG. THEN, via the effect of your plan, maybe the USFG takes that extra money and applies to rebuilding the infrastructure. maybe it takes the money and funds another war. Maybe it takes the money and passes universal health care. maybe it takes the money and gives all of us tax breaks… That’s effects-topicality and that explodes the topic for no good reason. Fiat does not allow you to then say “furthermore, this increase in gas tax will go to project x, y, z.” See the furthermore, bells should be ringing that this is effects-topical.
Again, I feel it’s critical that this topic deals with transportation infrastructure and not transportation policy. I would agree 100% with you if the topic was the latter. But the affirmative does not have access to the nebulous policy term – it’s stuck with infrastructure which, by all right, is the ONLY limiting term in the resolution (given that many ppl see domestic as not even requiring within the US). Why are you giving away to the affirmative everything? That would make for a pretty skewed interpretation. As I said in the post and again here, my interpretation allows for pretty good division since the aff is limited to dealing with actual infrastructure whereas the neg would/could have access to funding.
on your 2 – 1. yes, this is what disadvantages are for – see above. GOP Backlash? Should be a pretty standard Disadvantage this year. As an affirmative you have to defend the consequences of spending the money you propose just as you have to defend every other consequence of your plan (such as environmental).
2. It seems odd that improvement has to come via money or more specifically, from your post, MORE money. It could very easily be accomplished by changing priorities from where money is currently going to where it should. It could also come from stopping money from going from one thing to another. Either way, this seems a non-issue and not especially relevant to the question of whether or not changing the financial structure of transportation infrastructure is topical.
on your 3 – OK, then you should go with my interpretation if you believe the topic has a huge aff skew. My interp provides a reasonable limit that is grounded in the actual resolution we have this year.
Again, the funding through normal means or 0.5 cut in nuclear program is irrelevant. The question is whether or not a case dealing with how we fund transportation infrastructure is topical. I contend it is not because it’s doing nothing to reform the infrastructure on face. By an effect, sure. But to allow an Aff to be effects-topical explodes this huge topic even more…
Everything with topicality, as Dr. Miller as eloquently said before, deals with better or worse interpretations. My interpretation, as I have laid out, gives a pretty clear picture of what cases are topical and provides some good limits. The aff has to deal with reform of actual physical infrastructure – like roads, rail, ports or air. The neg gets everything else.
Got any evidence that says the financial underpinning is “domestic transportation infrastructure rather than “policy”? Most evidence I’ve seen defines it as physical things, not the policies that fund the physical things – at least not directly.
1st off, I am happy that I could keep this under 1 page on a word doc! W00T!
@nick – I agree, no advantages can come of the spec of funding. However, turns should be allowed.
Also, how is this different from any other DA? If you throw out spending on N/M and they say N/M spending good that isn’t XT, is it? However, replace N/M with kick f-22s and spending with heg and “oh we got a shit storm a brewing.” To use the jargon we so love, where is the uniqueness?
“Also, how can the aff spike out of disads by spec’ing the funding? Most tradeoff disads say that “normal means is that X will be cut to pay for the plan.” If the aff specs funding, the links simply go away and the disads are never run in the first place.”
The spike is so obvious that no one will run the DA! I love it! One less spending DA round, praise be to God!
Also, why would you argue heg good????? I feel dirty whenever I do that, like I need a shower.
– the nontopical da thing was just a joke, don’t worry to much about it.
@Danny – I am responsive, but it appears that the responses are not what you wanted… That and you either weren’t as clear in your 1st post or you shifted from what you originally said.
Most of what was said comes down to this – There are 2 arguments being made here. The 1st, which is yours, is that changing finances is not topical because it is not changing transportation infrastructure. The 2nd argument, mine, is that the word reform means a change to the financial process of T/I is. We are focusing on separate words.
You concluded your last post with talking about competing interpretations. However, the two interpretations do not compete because they are different words. I wish to reform, “make changes for improvement in order to remove abuse and injustices,” transportation infrastructure. You wish to change T/I, (you gotta do something to the domestic T/I) “America’s transportation system is one of the world’s most extensive, and includes highways, roads, airports, railways, and waterways.” The way these two interpretations work is that the Aff needs to remove the injustices of highways, bridges, rails, waterways, and a bunch of other things.
I see reforming T/I as being an action that increases access, repair, creation, change, or a new action towards our T/I. Why is funding not a part of that?
To Clarify:
I DO NOT advocate that you can just say, “plan text: The USFG will take .05% of funds away from the nuclear program and redirect them towards T/I”
I do advocate, “Plan text: The USFG will shift funding of all T/I projects to the 50 states and fund them by allowing them to keep the Federal 18.5 cent tax on gasoline.”
Mat – spiking out of a disad in the technical sense means that the negative has *already* presented the disad, and the aff uses a deceptive argument (most often generated from the plan text) to no-link the disad. It’s distinguished from a disad that simply has no link to a specific plan.
For example, if you have a disad that says highway funding is bad, just because the aff runs a plan to upgrade airports doesn’t mean they’ve “spiked” out of your disadvantage. There’s simply no link story for the negative to run with. It’s not abusive at all.
Danny: If you will teach me how to start my own threads, I will be only too happy to explain (plausibly, I hope) how funding spec can be topical (with evidence).
Briefly, there are many easily definable subsets to the universe of “domestic transportation infrastructure.” The way in which public domestic transportation is funded (primarily the gasoline tax and tolls for the time being) is part of transportation’s “financial infrastructure.” In the same fashion, the actual roads, bridges, etc., are part of domestic tranportation’s “capital infrastructure.” Highway, port, airport design is part of domestic transportation’s “planning infrastructure.” And, of course, the people who build and maintain domestic transportation structures are part of the “human resources infrastructure.” Why do you think the National Commission on Transportation Revenue, etc. was created at the behest of the House Transportation and INFRASTRUCTURE Committee?
This is not a very revolutionary concept. Just look up “infrastructure” in any good encyclopedia, and I think you will see what I mean.
And I don’t mean to – in any way – dis the excellent definitions you have posted. I’m just saying that “domestic transportation infrastructure” is a term that is used by many more people than civil engineers.
Completely random question, and I apologize for the threadjacking, but I am simply mystified by something. Observe the following trend:
1. The Long Beach high school tournament is the same weekend as the LD Camp/opener.
2. The CSU Fullerton high school tournament is the same weekend as the Free LD Debate at Irvine college.
3. The USC high school tournament is on the same weekend as UoP.
4. The La Costa Canyon high school tournament is on the same weekend as the PSCFA Fall Champs.
5. The Stanford high school tournament is the same weekend as Sunset Cliffs.
6. The Cal Berkeley Invitational shares the same weekend as the LD Championships.
I apologize for the all caps that follow but I really do want to scream it out.
EVERY SINGLE HIGH SCHOOL POLICY BID TOURNAMENT IN CALIFORNIA CONFLICTS WITH AN LD TOURNAMENT. WITHOUT EXCEPTION.
Before comparing the calendars, I was expecting maybe half of these tournaments would conflict with LD tournaments. But all six? Wow. I was looking forward to judging at 2 or 3 high school invitationals this year and it simply won’t happen.
Is this really a gigantic, bizarre coincidence or is this done intentionally for some reason?
Nick, @post 1 – thanks for the clarification. That is the way we have always used it where I came from. I guess we just used it the wrong way. That or I nubbed it up, lol.
@post 2 – it is a bizarre coincidence I am sure, that college tournaments overlap with HS tournaments. Those are the only weekends that the colleges can get access to their campus to run the tournaments sometimes. Sometimes, they have been traditionally on those dates (for years). It is also plausible that some of the smaller college tournaments happen on those dates because it fits into the host school’s coach’s schedule that way. Dr Rybald (IVC) is rather busy and I am thankful that he could host another tournament (he hosts a free ld and a free parli tournament).
Just so you know, to go to NFA, all you have to do it break at one tournament. There is no tournament of champs for ld that I have seen. If you break at one tournament you can skip out on a few other tournaments to judge the HS kids. Parli, on the other hand, does have a ToC called NPTE. If you are going to do parli I think you should be more concerned about that.
Your plan text must be topical. Any other advantages or turns to disadvantages or add on advantages can be an effect of a topical plan. Infrastructure can be defined in a variety of ways, and some would suggest that the money we have, or the way the money is spent, is infrastructure. The idea of the infrastructure bank is probably topical under many defs. of the term; and as I discussed in the camp there is a difference between “an” infrastructure and “infrastructure”, or “I” for short. Some will see “I” as hard things like roads and bridges; but others see “I” as part of transportation/urban planning. So…if you can find def. and offer a reasonable interpretation, you are topical. If you are angry about that as a Negative because that is so broad, that is not the AFF’s fault, but the Framers’. So you just need to get generic DAs with specific links, a generic one off of funding, and off of redesigning the funding, and so on, and be prepared. And as MHM points out, it will be way more interesting that a T debate or a Conditionality good/bad debate. We will still be debating about things related to transportation infrastructure.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
News alerts are great! I would also recommend Google Reader for keeping abreast of news, etc.