Debater doobage, not
This website claims they have a foolproof way to deliver pot to your door. I saw it on this CX-L thread. I posted it to MeFi and got some interesting perspective. Personally, I suspect it's a government sting.
posted by Nathan Hobbs Friday, March 30, 2001
Ancient history
Much debater fun from my era can be found digging through the CEDA-L archives. I posted my first ever internet presence from there on the mothership yesterday.More fun from there: the infamous Pointer and Slusher drunken top 10 list comparing the aforementioned Sean Lemoine and Greg "Snackbar" Achten. If you knew them, this will make you roll on the floor. If not, oh well.
Finally, Jeff's first internet presence is in this post where he argues against using internet evidence. Ha! Compare to this MeFi posting catching me in my nefarious plan to create evidence. Quote all you want, I'll say more.
posted by Nathan Hobbs Thursday, March 29, 2001
Reintroducing Debater's Corner
Tonight marks a turning point for Debater's Corner. When I started writing, I expected to be able to devote enough time every week to producing thinking about debate. However, as is obvious I don't have the energy or time to do that, so I'm switching gears. Debater's Corner will be a short form blog about debate stories and observations. I'll update it when I feel like it. I'll start with the thing that stopped me in the first place; a Critique/Kritik essay. What happened is I had a great time remembering funky stories but my reasoning about the Matter At Hand was weak. So, hell. Here's the digression, a couple of cool links, and the new beginning of Debater's Corner.What the hell's a cry-teek?
Ok, before I get to any substance, I need to explain the title. Sean LeMoine was a fixture on the national debate circuit while I was a debater (a mediocre one to be sure; but at least A] I'm a Pi Kappa Delta national champion, which sure looks good on a resume and B] I never got the "Mediocre Debater" award at the Northwest CEDA Champs banquet, which was the best ever awards banquet in debate history, but I digress even from my digression). He debated for Northwestern State University of Louisiana, with his partner, Jason Foote, making the team of "Foote 'n' LeGroine," as Bob Lechtrek dubbed them (I think. If I'm wrong attributing this moniker's coining to Bob, let me know). Anyway, during the early 90s, when the Critique/Kritik was jumping species from the NDT world to the CEDA world, olde tyme debaters like Sean didn't really get it, and in one round where he didn't understand a position run against him, he let loose with today's title quote.Now, Debater's Corner will always presuppose a level of knowledge from its readers, and that will mean I don't have to actually answer the rhetorical query posed by Mr. LeMoine (besides, others have much better than I could). I will, however, use it as a jumping off point to a criticism I have about the way the position is used within the world of debate. The idea of a critique isn't necessarily a bad one; pre-fiat positions definitely have a place within the universe of debate. They serve as a way to check language, racisim, and a bunch of other nasty -isms that can arise, as well as forcing a different way of looking at a round besides "weigh bodies." In fact, I don't think it's an accident that the critique appeared as a viable position just after the idea of Criteria went out of fashion. It used to be (in CEDA) that one would make as a part of an affirmative case a stated Criterial filter where you could more or less (it was debatable, of course) determine the order of weight a critic should give each of the issues. These were inevitably self serving for the Affirmative, but who doesn't love debating the Quality versus Quantity of life, right?
These positions became a way to reintroduce different evaluative techniques to rounds. Sometimes this was because they were the most generic thing possible to run, other times they are spot on and specific. In fact, while I started writing this with the mind that kritiks were generally bad for debate, it didn't take much thinking to convince myself that was stupid. I can think of a variety of kritiks that are not only good for debate, but also engage the affirmative on a major philosophical level. The major problem I have with any negative position is when it refuses to clash with the affirmative, but I'll talk about that a bit below.
Anyway, while critiques (kritiks, whatever; I'll use the terms interchangeably. As with many things in debate, spelling isn't that important; it's an oral/aural event) were introduced in NDT around 1991 and began appearing in 1994 en masse in CEDA (the author of the next link credits them to Bill Shanahan, which I've heard before. All I know about Shanahan is that he judged me and Mag once at USC and he picked us up, much to the chagrin of the Gonzaga team we were debating), I won't pretend that my era was the first that had squirrelly positions that functioned in the same way, however. I remember seeing a video once of Trond Jacobsen and Ted Prosise debating Joe Sullivan and partner in the late 80s or very early 90s, with Joe waxing poetic in his 2NC on a position called "Black Elk Speaks," a virtually unintelligible melange of native american philosophy. The other thing I remember about the video, besides Joe's crazy hair, is a monstrous convenience store cup that Ted and Trond were drinking constantly from. It was called the "Jammer" or something like that and from Ted's 1AR I'd guess that it had a large amount of distilled spirits. But, again, I digress.
Ugly!
Well, that was where my gumption petered out and the knowledge that I needed either a lot more time or a lot better thinking. But hey, feel free to critique me. Heh heh.
Two neat links:A paper on successful debate programs written by my collegiate DOF, Steve Hunt, and his buddy Ed Inch.
Jon Bruschke's Debate Bible. Can't disagree much. A good theory resource for beginning debaters. For Scott Steiskal.
posted by Nathan Hobbs Wednesday, March 28, 2001
