Author Archive
2009-2010 Season Sweepstakes!
Sorry for the delay, the week after Spring Champs it was off to Cedarville, Ohio followed by Spring Break. Here’s the final rankings for all three season awards we came up with back in September. Lincoln Division (Highest % of adjusted wins in at least three tournaments) 1 Biola University 2 University of California, Los [...]
Season Sweeps Update #5
Here is the latest update on the season sweeps. The amazing job that Eric Garcia and company are doing at Biola is not to be overlooked, as they are leading in both divisions! You’ll notice however UCLA is only 1.45% behind, so get on it Nick! As always, any errors are my own. You’ll recall [...]
Season Sweepstakes – Update #4
This update includes Fall Champs. As always, all errors in tabulation, spelling, etc. are entirely my own. Let me know of any mistakes and I’ll fix them right away. Reminder: We will have at least 3 LD Tournaments this semester (Pt. Loma, LD Champs, Spring Champs) which means that all debaters and teams will need [...]
Space Tourism – Run before 2012, or it won’t matter!
Longtime fans of this site, or people who have hung around the circuit long enough know that I have a tendency to write strange cases. Earlier this semester, I threw together a case as a handout for my Argumentation & Debate course. The case took me about 30 minutes to write (Lexis Nexis for the [...]
Season Sweeps Update #3, Comments on IVC tournament
First, let me say how much I enjoyed the tournament at IVC. It emphasized education, and de-emphasized trophies. People played the game, had fun and went home smarter. I especially appreciated Gary’s narrative feedback approach before awards, where he asked various members of the audience to share their stories from the tournament. This is obviously [...]
Some Clarity on Funding Theory
I would like offer some of my thoughts on why and to what extent an affirmative must discuss funding. These are my current thoughts, but I’m really interested in some discussion to help me reach some clarity. This seemed to come up a lot this weekend. 1) An affirmative must provide something under the plan [...]
Update to Yearlong Sweeps #2 & APU Results
Here’s the second update to the yearlong sweeps. It reflects the changes discussed since the last update, but should in no way be taken to be the final version of our rules. For example, we have no definite rounds/tournaments standards for qualifications. The results from last weekend are up on forensicstournament.net, but for convenience I’ll [...]
Showing Weakness While Judging Debate
While judging one of the out rounds of NFA L/D this last weekend, the other two judges and I had the opportunity to answer a few questions about our debate paradigms, a fairly normal practice these days. The question was, “How do you feel about the rules of NFA L/D concerning conversation rate and speed?” [...]
Update #1 to Season Sweepstakes
Here is the first update to our yearlong awards. Since all of the raw data from which this is tabulated is available on forensicstournament.net, and will likely remain so all year long, this should be a fairly transparent process. For answers to questions about where these numbers came from (for example, where is the guy [...]
Compartmentalizing this topic
Just wanted to share a nugget of wisdom I received this last weekend in a conversation with Phil Sharp, the coach at U of Nevada, Reno. He pointed out that there will only be two types of affirmatives this year: 1) Affirmatives that lessen the impact of transportation on the environment, and probably spend money [...]
Yearlong Sweeps?
A random idea I thought I’d throw out. What if we had a yearlong sweeps for SoCal schools that could be tracked on this site? Since a rule for life is that you shouldn’t bring up an idea you wouldn’t be willing to take on yourself, I’d be happy to run the spreadsheet. At this [...]
Teaching L/D in the classroom
Let me first start by echoing Danny’s wishes for a great new year. Many of us are either starting new classes, or in some sort of winter/inter session and revising our spring syllabi. I though I would take advantage of the opportunity to start some conversation about how to teach L/D in the classroom. One [...]
