Here's Emory

As always, take whatever makes sense and ignore the rest.

Here they are.

While we're waiting for the fun to begin at Emory . . .

I've long thought that I should confess that I have a terrible memory of debaters and the schools they go to?  Hand-in-hand with that is the fact that I'm practically face-blind, so as soon as we leave the chamber, poof.  It's all gone. 

I get the sense sometimes that everyone else knows everyone and where they go to school.  Not me.  At Sunvite Finals I gave a richly deserved 1 and 2 to debaters from the same school--I knew because their code BT was the same--and I assumed they were from some powerhouse in South Florida or in the Northeast or one of those schools out west.  But they were from Napierville, wherever that is.  (Illinois, I'm thinking.) 

In the room I just parlied, I'm pretty sure I know where one of the fourteen debaters is from.  The rest, even the ones I've judged a few times?  No idea.  (OK, DeVito is from New York--I know because it was In. Every. Intro.) 

I could learn where y'all are from, if I made an effort.  I won't. 

If my ballot-rankings seem eccentric sometimes, all I can say is that I'm sure of them (they seem obvious and indisputable to me), and you should be proud if I've ranked you, even if no other judge did.  School reps and relationships aren't playing any role in my decision, because I have only the vaguest idea who anyone is. 

Minneapple 2017 Prelims Chamber 4 Notes

Sorry these are going up a few hours later than promised.

As always, use whatever feedback seems helpful to you and ignore the rest.  

Here they are.

Resources NFCFL Fall Gathering Novice Congress Workshop

Here are my thoughts . . .

. . . on what makes Congress special.

. . . on how to select a bill topic.

. . . on how Congress judges think (to the extent we do).

And here's a manifesto of sorts.

TOC 2017 Chamber C Prelims

My commentary here is . . . a little uneven.  More useful than nothing, I hope.  TOC prelims chambers are like starting in a tough semis chamber.  Your judges and I had difficult decisions to make.

As always, use whatever makes sense and ignore the rest.

I didn't go on my usual "sanctity of evidence" rant (see earlier posts if you'd like) at the beginning of the round to see what would happen if I didn't.  It might have hurt a couple of people, but generally I did not see much of a difference.

Emory 2017 Chamber 7

The usual disclaimer:  Take whatever makes sense to you and ignore the rest of my lunatic ravings.

Chamber 7 notes.  Y'all were really good.  My top two were obvious but after that I struggled.

Incantation by Czeslaw Milosz

Something I've been thinking about lately . . .

Incantation by Czeslaw Milosz

Human reason is beautiful and invincible. 

No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books, 

No sentence of banishment can prevail against it. 

It establishes the universal ideas in language, 

And guides our hand so we write Truth and Justice 

With capital letters, lie and oppression with small. 

It puts what should be above things as they are, 

Is an enemy of despair and a friend of hope. 

It does not know Jew from Greek or slave from master, 

Giving us the estate of the world to manage. 

It saves austere and transparent phrases 

From the filthy discord of tortured words. 

It says that everything is new under the sun, 

Opens the congealed fist of the past. 

Beautiful and very young are Philo-Sophia 

And poetry, her ally in the service of the good. 

As late as yesterday Nature celebrated their birth, 

The news was brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo. 

Their friendship will be glorious, their time has no limit. 

Their enemies have delivered themselves to destruction. 

Berkeley, 1968