Instructional
Affirmative Side Bias
First, I want to congratulate everyone for a fantastic season of NFA-LD in Southern California. The activity is growing by leaps and bounds and there are some phenomenally talented debaters in our area.
I’m going to use this forum to discuss one of the biggest problems that NFA-LD had this year – affirmative side bias. [...]
Critical Thinking
Throughout higher education critical thinking is a central tenant of most college classes. Most students must complete a “critical thinking” requirement in order to get their degree. Debate is certainly one of the best activities to teach critical thinking and is one of the reasons it is my passion to teach and share [...]
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 [...]
Case Idea?
Have your case adopted by the federal government already? Looking for a new winning affirmative after your 1AC went 0-2 last weekend?
Here is an interesting idea that I read about today on the New York Times – roundabouts. It’s pretty clearly topical – I’m not sure how much more reforming of roads you could [...]
Interesting comment
From the Sunset Cliffs post an anonymous person writes:
all the preparation is wasted. opp strategy is always Topicality, procedurals, and counterplans. the debate doesn’t start until the 2nd speech.
at least thats what it seems like.
If true, I think this is a very damaging to both the future adoption of the event by schools and [...]
Sunset Cliffs – Open Field Report
The Sunset Cliffs Invitational, hosted by Point Loma Nazarene University in sunny San Diego is now just a week away. As of Sunday afternoon, there were 40 teams representing 14 schools from eight states. This is truly a phenomenal field – by far the largest and most competitive in Southern California this year. I’ll start [...]
New Book on Gridlock
Here is a new book on transportation policy. If you’re looking for some good cards and a qualified source this may be a good pickup before the spring tournaments.
Gridlock presents a wide range of innovative ideas and policy recommendations for creating an effective transportation system—improvements that will increase our mobility and pay for themselves, whether [...]
One Small step for… NFA-LD?
Alright! Our first poll is finished at SoCal-LD.net and our community topic for next year that we’ll submit is on Space Exploration.
Here are the requirements for the brief due by Jan 31 – so we have about two weeks.
In order to be accepted for consideration, the topic area must be in the form of a [...]
Freight Mobility Case
Here is another case idea that I’ve come across – a case surrounding freight mobility. While the article is rather light on specifics I imagine if you did a little bit of research you’d be able to find some policy recommendations.
Panelists discussed the need for a national freight vision as critical to the future [...]
Introduction to Debate
From talking to lots of coaches in Southern California it seems that some programs are approaching NFA-LD as a “spring semester” event – with the idea that we get our students warmed up in the fall and then do a big push to get the event ready for state/nationals over break in the spring. [...]
Looking for Hired Judges? Want to be a hired judge?
I’m happy to announce my next project is ready to roll out as a beta site for the Spring 2010 semester – JudgeHarmony.com
JudgeHarmony solves the #1 problem tournament directors and coaches face – finding enough judges for upcoming tournaments. The site is available for middle school, high school and college tournaments.
We also solve a common [...]
Case Idea? Require broadband…
Not sure if this would be topical or not but it sounds really interesting – require any new construction to install broadband telecommunications cables.
My initial thought is that this is a perfect example of reforming the infrastructure. Currently, highways are not required to have broadband – this reform will require them which will greatly boost [...]
