I, for one, do not fully understand the arguments against this. Photographing evidence allows debaters to:

• Ensure everyone is citing evidence accurately (i.e. text is verbatim)
• Quickly collect citations (very little time in-between rounds)
• Promote better information-sharing (better debates)

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1) The tournament really benefited from the great Midwestern schools that swelled the ranks.  Some great debaters to watch, and got to hang a bit with Glenn Prince again.

2) The cultural gulf between L/D in the Midwest and L/D in California is fairly wide.  Some evidence: One California judge reported to me that he was called out in a loud manner in front of students by a non-California judge who said, “How dare you tell us what ‘conversational’ means!” after the California judge voted on a speed position.  What’s sad about this horrible argument is that not only is the judge a, you know, judge, so he’s kinda supposed to have an opinion on who won the arguments about the meanings of words, but the argument is of course self defeating.  He was trying to argue that “conversational” can’t have an objective meaning, but that his interpretation was more correct.  Critical thinking fail.

The good Midwestern debaters adapted, the poor ones didn’t adapt and got frustrated.  My advice to several was to “at least have the ability” to read your case with more dynamic vocal patterns if you want to do well at Pt. Loma.

3) This is an oversimplification, but may be clarifying for some.  Midwestern debate teams see L/D as an alternative to IEs, since it normally runs along side them at their tournaments.  This means that L/D should not be like impromptu and extemp, and should include more speed and more arguments.  California debate teams see L/D as an alternative to Parli and CEDA, and so as Parli (especially in Open) gets faster and more nonsensical in California, the L/D teams I see tend to get more persuasive and logical in their speed.

4) Tough weekend.  One of my debaters and at least one other young lady I spoke to were 3-1 and didn’t break.  The CBU affirmative went 9-1, which shows the earliness of the season.  My guess is that affirmatives based on some sort of economic sanction will get less popular as the year goes on.

5) Friday will be epic, because most of the local schools got copies of each other’s affs and will be poking massive holes in them.

6) W. Kentucky was doing something so obvious, I can’t believe more debaters aren’t doing this.  Instead of writing down cites furiously, they were taking pictures of evidence with smartphones.  CA debaters were so thrown off by this, at least two claimed this was “cheating”, which of course it is not.  Anything presented in a round is the intellectual property of your opponent, regardless of method.  Great idea, wish I had thought of it.

7) Public congrats to Matt “DeathHawk” Phillips of CBU who won the tournament (Novice L/D at least) at his first ever forensics competition.  Welcome to Junior, sir.

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I apologize for the lack of page numbers on the front of the CBU material, but I’m trying to get my whole team using Google Documents this year, they have yet to put that feature into their newest “Table of Contents” function.  If they don’t do it soon, I may have to go back to OpenOffice.

This is the packet that Danny and I will be distributing at the coaches conference this afternoon in Rancho Mirage, for those of you planning on attending.  We’ll be sure to post anything LD related that comes out of this weekend’s conversations.

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In the spring of 2010 UIL had a topic that dealt with free trade versus protectionism. While it’s not exactly the same topic we’re covering the site features a great overview that will point you in the right direction.

Here is one helpful section:

Second, the affirmative can make the claim that free trade decreases the likelihood of war and increases peace. In 1748, Baron de Montesquieu wrote that “Peace is the natural effect of trade. Two nations who differ with each other become reciprocally dependent; for if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling; and thus their union is founded on their mutual necessities.”

This can be a powerful affirmative argument. If the United States is dependent on, say, China for trade, we may be deterred from starting a war with China because, in the end, we need the goods they give us more than we need to blow them up. Likewise, if China is dependent on the money we give them for the things they provide, they will be less likely to take extreme action in the case of a disagreement.

That would be a great stock answer to any war disadvantage… good luck with your researching.

Tomorrow, at the PSCFA coaches conference, Marse and I will be facilitating a discussion of this year’s topic and we will have some evidence to share. I’ll post everything that gets distributed sometime next week on the site so stay tuned!

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Fortunately, in 2005-2006, the NDT-CEDA policy debate community debated the following resolution -

Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase diplomatic and economic pressure on the People’s Republic of China in one or more of the following areas: trade, human rights, weapons nonproliferation, Taiwan.

You’ll notice that one of the subareas of this resolution is trade. For your convenience, I’ve examined a substantial quantity of NDT backfiles and cites and compiled a list of the most popular affirmatives that were run that year and could potentially be topical under this year’s resolution. Rather than go through specific plan texts, this list consists of sub-topic areas that can be translated into policy action in a manner of your choosing.

• Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (file a WTO complaint)
• Censorship/Internet filtering
• Currency revaluation (Renminbi)
• Export bans/restrictions on PRC goods (NB: there are hundreds of potential targets. Common examples were endangered wildlife species, products made by prison labor, and solid wood packaging).
• Forced technology transfers (including military technology)
• Application of countervailing duty law on the PRC
• Revoke PRC’s Most Favored Nation (PNTR) status
• Sanctions on PRC companies and products (NB: there’s literally an infinite number of sub-cases that can be fiated. Common conditions included revaluing the Renminbi, ending various human rights abuses, ending the one-child policy, ending Sudanese oil contracts, etc).*

It’s important to note that these cases all assume the world of 2005-2006, and I haven’t checked the inherency on any of them. Before you get excited and run off to cut cards, it is critical that you make sure that your chosen policy area has not already been superseded in the interim.

You should also keep in mind that the above list is nowhere near exhaustive. For instance, export restrictions on U.S. goods aren’t even mentioned because they were rarely topical under the NDT resolution, yet they will likely form an integral part of this year’s resolution.

If you are doing negative research, it’d be a good idea to have some generic answers ready to go for the first tournament on all of these cases, since you’re not going to know what anybody is running beforehand.

I hope this was useful.

- Nick

* I’ll discuss whether or not sanctions are actually a form of “trade policy/practices” in a later post.

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Regarding the ability to counterplan I think there is a growing body of research (I have been reviewing it this evening) on Subnational cooperation with China. I think a really fascinating counter-plan could be developed arguing that there is no need for Federal Action when Governors and States have been doing a lot to reform trade policy with China:

As the United States and China continue to build stronger government-to-government ties, there is a growing awareness in both countries that increased cooperation at the subnational level will strengthen our bilateral relationship and benefit both our countries. At the second round of the Strategic and Economic Dialogue in May 2010, the United States and China pledged to enhance bilateral economic cooperation at the subnational levels. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2011/01/154874.htm

It would operate like the States counterplan (follow the link for a thorough explanation). The key for me is that this seems to be an emerging area of the debate over U.S.-China Trade policy so it seems very germane to the discussion.

In the event the affirmative debater runs a very “small” trade policy case I wonder if this type of counterplan, coupled with a politics disadvantage, could be a winning strategy.

Your thoughts?

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The first file I clicked on was a topicality shell (DDW11-Topicality-Wave2-NEG) which has some interesting theory arguments. Another good reason to review them is they bring up some interesting examples of tags and cards. For example, in the file on page three is this card trying to assert that Depth (smaller topic) is better than breadth (big topic).

3. Studies prove – depth is better than breadth.
Arrington, UVA Today, ‘9 (Rebecca, UVA Today, “Study Finds That Students Benefit From Depth, Rather Than Breadth, in High School Science Courses” March 4)

A recent study reports that high school students who study fewer science topics, but study them in greater depth, have an advantage in college science classes over their peers who study more topics and spend less time on each. Robert Tai, associate professor at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education, worked with Marc S. Schwartz of the University of Texas at Arlington and Philip M. Sadler and Gerhard Sonnert of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics to conduct the study and produce the report. “Depth Versus Breadth: How Content Coverage in High School Courses Relates to Later Success in College Science Coursework” relates the amount of content covered on a particular topic in high school classes with students’ performance in college-level science classes. The study will appear in the July 2009 print edition of Science Education and is currently available as an online pre-print from the journal. “As a former high school teacher, I always worried about whether it was better to teach less in greater depth or more with no real depth. This study offers evidence that teaching fewer topics in greater depth is a better way to prepare students for success in college science,” Tai said. “These results are based on the performance of thousands of college science students from across the United States.” The 8,310 students in the study were enrolled in introductory biology, chemistry or physics in randomly selected four-year colleges and universities. Those who spent one month or more studying one major topic in-depth in high school earned higher grades in college science than their peers who studied more topics in the same period of time. The study revealed that students in courses that focused on mastering a particular topic were impacted twice as much as those in courses that touched on every major topic.

But how I presented it above is not how it’s underlined in the brief. The quotation above makes it clear that the study was specifically in science classes. But the card leaves that completely out of the debate!

Now, one could make a very compelling argument that this study can be understood to apply to other areas of education as well – such as when debating public policy. But the brief doesn’t take the time to assert the connection. As a judge (and especially as the opposing debater) this would be something to stress in in a rebuttal. When the evidence in this position becomes really flimsy a judge will begin to evaluate the other evidence in the same negative light.

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Just found this while doing some basic research on the topic…http://www.futureofuschinatrade.com/ … seems pretty good! It’s hosted by Arizona State University and The Kearny Alliance which gives it a lot of credibility. Post the best stuff you find in the comments!

I wonder if we can get the collaboration to sponsor the SoCal-LD Championships this year! =)

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