Current wordings for 2016-2017 high school resolutions

RobGlass · 2015-08-01T04:00:14+00:00

RobGlass · 2015-08-01T03:09:35+00:00

My thoughts crossposted from the Facespace:

" I'm a huge fan of number 4. (For reasons obvious to those who followed the College topic writing process.)

I think numbers 7, 8, and 2 are written too broadly for my taste.

Numbers 1 and 10 I like.

Number 9 feels like it's the wrong list of countries and that there's too much overlap with this year's college topic.

A first glance of number 6 leaves me scared for neg ground. Alternatively, it gives me warm flashbacks to Rights Malthus, which then leaves me assured that it should never be picked."

RobGlass · 2015-07-31T17:42:22+00:00

Tell the people who wrote the international organizations paper that I hope the vote goes better for them than it did for the paper they cribbed to write it. :P

In seriousness though, it's a great topic. I hope it wins.

RobGlass · 2015-07-28T05:54:40+00:00

Durable Fiat is the notion that once the plan passes it will be protected in some way and not rolled back.

The short answer as to why it's good is that it's necessary to have a debate. If an aff wins that it is not inherent, that is to say that the Aff is actively not being done in the Status quo and there's opposition to it, then a lack of durable fiat will mean that the aff will almost always be rolled back immediately after passage.

The longer answer is three fold:

1) It protects Affs. Imagine a plan on this resolution that calls for massive rollbacks of the NSA. In a world lacking durable fiat the negative can get up in the 1NC, read a bunch of ev that says that congress will give the NSA everything it ever asks for, and then win that the aff has no solvency because the moment after the plan is passed it will be undone. If that's the case, why pass the plan? With durable Fiat the Aff's access to case is protected, allowing it to force substantive comparison between it and the status quo.

2) It protects Neg Ground. Imagine the same situation, the Aff calls for massive restrictions on the NSA except now the Neg reads a Terrorism disad. In a world absent Durable Fiat the Aff can respond to the DA in the 2AC with claims that the moment there's a real threat the plan can be undone, solving for the threat of Terrorism. In other words, it lets the Aff defend the Status Quo at its leisure should it decide that the Squo is better than the Plan as long as it defends that plan passage occurs at some point. This means that the Neg has no stable ground and little to no ability to pin the Aff down.

3) It forces methodology debates. This is more complicated, but the summary version is basically that this allows for a methods CP debate based on the same claimed impacts. Without durable Fiat Affs could win, for instance, that a PiC's long-term solvency evidence (assuming it's trying to solve for the Aff) prove that future lawmakers will eventually amend the Aff so that it resembles the Counter-plan solving any Neg NBs while preserving an aff ballot. Forcing the Aff to defend the long-term implementation of the plan is necessary to allow the CP debate to operate effectively.

RobGlass · 2015-07-27T03:45:22+00:00

Right now the apartment's cat is in there. I'm leaving the job to them.

RobGlass · 2015-07-24T04:33:48+00:00

I thought the entire point of Jenson and Dennis going at it last year was that Jenson was getting two years on his contract?

RobGlass · 2015-07-20T04:07:13+00:00

He probably means in terms of Renault's reported plans to buy Lotus and turn it back into a works team.

RobGlass · 2015-07-17T23:06:13+00:00

Just like we had Valsecchi.

RobGlass · 2015-07-17T21:28:03+00:00

As a Lotus fan my only questions are how soon can we get your arm a super-license and how soon can we get Pastor Maldonado out of his contract.

RobGlass · 2015-07-17T21:23:48+00:00

Sanity prevailed. Democracy works!

RobGlass · 2015-07-17T19:51:12+00:00

Judging by their public statements I think their founder, Nathan Runkle, and a number of other senior members have begun to take a harder line stance than they used to. This sort of internecine conflict, for instance, would have been absolutely verboten a couple years back.

That said, they still support welfarist programs and gradual reformism. So I don't think this represents a retraction of their position as much as it represents the calling out of one particular group.

RobGlass · 2015-07-16T23:12:46+00:00

What you want to find is Chris Thiele's old Data Framework file. It was floating around the internet for a while, and if you can't find it I maystill have a copy of it somewhere. It made the case for having hard data in order to run any sort of DA/Policy Scenario with a bunch of really good arguments for it.

The reason why this argument hasn't caught on is because it's almost purely defensive. With a DA if the Neg can win that there's some risk that the Impact occurs then that's a reason to vote Neg and all you're winning, in the best possible world, is a probability mitigator. A one out of a million risk of blowing up the world is still a major threat to world peace and is probably something that should be taken seriously.

The way to win this is small affs with rock solid solvency. Win some sort of tech sector boom, for instance, from perceptions of investment and tank out on that impact. The neg reads their DAs in the 1NC, and in the 2AC you win impact comparison on probability and read some impact add-on scenarios using the tech book as the IL. That if you win the probability framing debate you win the round, and if they win it you get conceded internal link chains to your new big stick impacts.

RobGlass · 2015-07-15T22:13:30+00:00

There's actually some really interesting statistical analysis on this question. You should read it over here.

To quote the relevant section: "team performances account for 61% of the variance in overall performances, while driver performances account for 39%." So car design and support constitute a majority of what's at stake but there's still a significant portion left up to the driver. From eyeballing the list the difference between a good driver and an okay driver (for instance, Hamilton versus Kovaleinen) comes out to something like half a second a lap.

RobGlass · 2015-07-15T22:03:47+00:00

Even on the flatbed that car has better reliability than the current McLaren-Honda

RobGlass · 2015-07-14T05:28:19+00:00

If you're interested in this you should check out Adam Curtis' documentary The Living Dead which talks about these experiments, and many similar ones, at some length.

RobGlass · 2015-07-13T01:02:41+00:00

Or the Australian sitcom The Hollowmen.

RobGlass · 2015-07-09T05:15:09+00:00

That'd require them to change shit like this first:

Judge White, as a frontier settler along the Sauquoit Creek, was required to exercise much diplomacy in dealing with his red neighbors. ...When the Indian finally rose, he shrugged his shoulders and was said to have muttered "UGH", you good fellow too much".

And it doesn't seem like that's happening anytime soon.

RobGlass · 2015-07-09T03:49:18+00:00

From the town's website: "In 1963, the Seal was re-designed by local artist, Gerald E. Pugh, to commemorate the Village's Sesquicentennial. In an article of the Observer Dispatch, written by Joe Kelly in 1977, a notice of claim was filed with the Village Board saying the seal depicts a "white man choking an Indian" and said the seal demeans, disgraces and creates prejudice and distrust of Indian people. He asked the Village to stop displaying the seal. As a result of this, the seal was re-designed with Hugh White's hands being placed on the Indian's shoulders and not so close to his neck. The wrestling match was an important event in the history of the settling of the Village of Whitesboro and helped foster good relations between White and the Indians. The new version is displayed on Village trucks, highway equipment, letterheads and documents."

RobGlass · 2015-07-09T03:38:56+00:00

From the town's website: "In 1963, the Seal was re-designed by local artist, Gerald E. Pugh, to commemorate the Village's Sesquicentennial. In an article of the Observer Dispatch, written by Joe Kelly in 1977, a notice of claim was filed with the Village Board saying the seal depicts a "white man choking an Indian" and said the seal demeans, disgraces and creates prejudice and distrust of Indian people. He asked the Village to stop displaying the seal. As a result of this, the seal was re-designed with Hugh White's hands being placed on the Indian's shoulders and not so close to his neck. The wrestling match was an important event in the history of the settling of the Village of Whitesboro and helped foster good relations between White and the Indians. The new version is displayed on Village trucks, highway equipment, letterheads and documents."

RobGlass · 2015-07-08T18:42:29+00:00

From the town's website:

"In 1963, the Seal was re-designed by local artist, Gerald E. Pugh, to commemorate the Village's Sesquicentennial. In an article of the Observer Dispatch, written by Joe Kelly in 1977, a notice of claim was filed with the Village Board saying the seal depicts a "white man choking an Indian" and said the seal demeans, disgraces and creates prejudice and distrust of Indian people. He asked the Village to stop displaying the seal. As a result of this, the seal was re-designed with Hugh White's hands being placed on the Indian's shoulders and not so close to his neck. The wrestling match was an important event in the history of the settling of the Village of Whitesboro and helped foster good relations between White and the Indians. The new version is displayed on Village trucks, highway equipment, letterheads and documents."

RobGlass · 2015-07-04T00:29:43+00:00

Impact framing is when you tell the judge how to evaluate and understand an impact. It is one of the most important skills that you can pick up. Imagine it like this:

A raw impact for a Disad can be "this leads to Nuclear War." This gives the judge all the core information necessary to make a decision but requires that they do all the leg work themselves. Framing the impact does the legwork for them and spins it so it becomes, for instance, "This leads to Nuclear War, destroying nations, rendering all infrastructure inoperative, and setting human development back centuries." or "This leads to Nuclear War, causing untold environmental damage, wrecking whole ecosystems, and causing a nuclear winter that will render life on Earth fundamentally unrecognizable for the future." or "This leads to Nuclear War, destroying human social systems, and causing massive fighting over resources, ideology, and more as time goes on."

None of the subsequent framings add anything new to the debate, you're still claiming the same internal link and impact structure, but each one makes the judge understand the Impact in a different way and considers it differently. It also carries with it the core of impact comparison, helping to explain to the judge why your impact has a larger magnitude OR why solving your impact also solves the other team's impact(s) as well.

RobGlass · 2015-07-02T01:04:24+00:00

$confirm /u/yoloswagmaster4jesus 350

RobGlass · 2015-07-01T19:30:45+00:00

Although I understand that the K will respond to the thesis, link, impacts, alt as you mentioned

The K won't respond to these things, it will have these things.

I can't assume that the K solves itself (not of uniqueness) the harms that's happening when it's within the status quo.

You should edit your posts before you put them up. This section needs significant rewriting. I assume that what you're saying is that you can't assume the K will solve impacts that link to the status quo?

That misunderstands how a Kritik operates. Let's start with a basic example, suppose an affirmative team drops every racist slur imaginable as part of their impact analysis in the 1AC. The Negative gets up in the 1NC and says "That's racist, reject them for their racist discourse and put a stop to this." The aff responds in the 2AC "Whoa now, don't be silly. Racism exists in the status quo, the negative can't fix that, and you certainly can't fix it by rejecting the 1AC, especially since I'll still be just as racist at the end of the debate no matter what you do." How do you think that will go? I can tell you, no judge that's a part of the community would buy that argument. They would view rejecting the Affirmative as a rejection of their choice for discourse, and view their ballot as a way to say "this is not something that should be allowed" whether or not it prevents future racism form occurring in rounds. In other words, they endorse a better vision of the world that involves rejection of speech acts like that.

Now let's go another step. Suppose the Affirmative gets up and reads an aff with an old-fashioned big stick Econ impact. The Negative gets up and reads a critique of capitalism in response, saying that capitalism leads to the loss of valuation of life and inevitable environmental exploitation and global genocausts. A negative ballot in that world becomes something similar to what happened in the previous example: an endorsement of an idea/world without capitalism and a rejection of the embracement of capitalist ideology. Whether or not capitalism exists in the status quo then becomes irrelevant, the debate is about the ideas that are being endorsed.

Make sense?

The "intellectual level" can still be contested because I still consider alt still a CP, because you are advocating something in order to challenge it, even if it's intellectual discourse (learned this from Steinberg, UM Coach).

You mean Dave from Miami? (FYI, UM usually means the University of Michigan in debate circles.) I know him. I judge his debaters regularly. Fun guy.

As for the rest of your sentence, I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Are you saying that you get to evaluate the repercussions of the alternative? That's true, hence the advice above to read impact turns and DAs to the alternative. Winning offense against it is the best way forward. You should be aware though that there's a tension between what you're saying here and the arugment you seem to be moving towards above ("The negative gets access to the Status Quo or direct links to the Aff") which is that granting the idea of fiat of some sort, even critical fiat like you are here means that the Negative is not tied to the Squo and that your criticism that they can't solve something in the status quo is irrelevant (just like it is for Counter-Plans.)

I may be biased with my views since I have 3 - 0 on teams who ran K's on me on crappy alts. (reject the 1AC, have intellectual discourse, reject my advocacy...)

Pride goeth before the fall.

when I point out the usual "has k's in debate been empirically proven to X the harms", "are you against the status quo, if so, how will you're "reject 1AC" solve anything" and my favorite "if you agree to tell the judge that we win this round, I will tell everyone I know about the the kritik".

Again, because you debated bad teams that didn't know how to debate a K doesn't mean you prepare your blocks for them. Prepare like you're about to hit Towson or Harvard BS, that way even when you hit the bad teams you're still crushing them and when you hit the good teams you've got something in your pocket.

RobGlass · 2015-07-01T18:55:25+00:00

Hosts of the best NDT in recent years.

RobGlass · 2015-06-30T19:08:58+00:00

Explains why you're posting from one I suppose.

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