Monthly Archives: August 2009

Drop Box

Some of you may already know about drop box as I appear to have accidentally spammed out an invite to everyone in my g-contacts (my b). Anywhoo- this thing is pretty cool for sharing files, esp. if you are going paperless.

Basically, the problem with using like gmail is that you have to remember to check it and update files. Drop box is a software program that automatically checks for new files and downloads them to your computer making sure you never forget. You can get a free 2 gig account (which if you do files in word is probably more than you would ever need) by signing up with this link.

It should also be noted that this was Roy’s discovery, and he is the best around.

The States CP

As is becoming an annoying trend, Stefan has beaten me to the punch on a how to debate the states CP post- you can read it here http://www.planetdebate.com/blogs/view/357

For an aff perspective here are some posts I made last year

http://spdebate.blogspot.com/2008/07/states-cp-part-1.html

http://spdebate.blogspot.com/2008/07/states-cp-part-2-theory.html

http://spdebate.blogspot.com/2008/09/states-cp-part-3-thinking-strategically.html

Bahls Makes Me Think: An Interesting Judging Hypothetical And How I Resolved It

A big part of the magic of high school policy debate is that one truly never knows what is going to happen. While most contest rounds follow a similar script, every now and then a debate challenges its participants—both contestants and critics—to think—really think—about some of the fundamental theoretical underpinnings of our game. Sometimes these debates occur between the best of the best in high school or college debate. And sometimes they occur in debates between rising sophomores at a summer debate institute in Ann Arbor. This is the story of one of these latter debates. It is dedicated to Alex Bahls of Wayzata High School, a debater that has challenged me to think about debate theory more thoroughly and creatively during the last three weeks than perhaps any student I’ve ever worked with. This one’s for you, Bahls.

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Fiat, Math, and Political Process Disadvantages

There are a couple of interesting threads on Cross-X.com that discuss the theoretical underpinnings of political process disadvantages. In particular, Ankur Sarodia has developed a mathematical model that seeks to demonstrate that certain political process disadvantages are not legitimate considerations when determining whether the affirmative plan should be enacted. In this guest post, Dylan Keenan—debate coach at Emory University and the Westminster Schools—provides a rebuttal to the Sarodia model.

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