How Not To Debate

This probably won't be funny unless you've seen or done NCFCA debate... but watch it anyways

How (Not) to Debate from Jake Siewert on Vimeo.

SuperShrink Me

Typically when you judge, watch or are in a debate round you take notes of the round on a full page of paper (called flowing). Last Saturday I drove Peter and Aidan up to a practice debate tournament in New Hampshire and watched a few rounds. Because I have nothing else especially lame to post about I thought I would post a couple photos of some of my flows from a few of the rounds that I observed. The paper that the sticky tabs are on is the normal size flow pad with the notes/arguments written on it from one round. The three other sticky tabs are condensed flows of three rounds with the same amount of information on them as the first paper they are on top of – just written really tiny (the red one is two sided).

Expanding Detention Space for Illegal Immigrants Negative

Here's a brief [click on the link to download] against a case that I made a few months ago against
Expanding Detention Space for Illegal Immigrants.

I never actually got to use it but I would have loved to.

search keywords, Reynolds/Schlaudraff, ncfca, debate, team policy, detention space

Resolutions Released

The 08-09 NCFCA debate resolutions have been released

TP
A - Resolved: That the U.S. should significantly change its foreign policy toward one or more of
the following countries: Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Peru.
B - Resolved: That the United States should reform its policies to substantially reduce world
hunger.
C - Resolved: That the U.S. should significantly change its foreign policy toward India.


LD
A - Resolved: When in conflict, idealism ought to be valued above pragmatism.
B - Resolved: That form ought to be valued above content in art.
C - Resolved: That in education application ought to be valued above knowledge.

Lights, Camera - Homeschoolers!

CBN reports on the Virgina NCFCA Debate and Speech Open Tournament (the reason why I was gone Tus. thru Sat...).

Regarding the tournament, my partner and I finished 16th overall in TP (4 & 2 record, 1 & 1 in the outrounds, thought we lost the outround debate we won, and won the outround debate we thought we really lost), not a great finish, but not all that terrible.

Into the land of the dead; I mean, debaters...

As I'm sure you know (if you don't know, you will know, why, I don't know), last Sunday I (we) headed down south to Texas to debate at the NCFCA National Tournament. I had actually never been on a plane before, doing bellyflops into the pool off the high jumping-board into a pool was the closest I had ever come to flying. Well then, actually that's not right. As a small child, I once was pushed off the viewing deck of the World Trade Tower (One 110 story) and fell all the way to the 30 floor before a helicopter piloted by Bill Clinton and Bill Gates snatched me from the air and saved me from sure death. But that's a long story, and it's classified anyways. Anyhow, the flight down to Texas went well with no problems and very few delays. In fact we arrived four hours earlier then we were expecting.

As soon as we landed in Austin and set foot outside of the airport terminal, I knew right away that we really were in Texas. The mild 190 degree temperatures plus the smell of cooked rattlesnake easily gave it away. And to make a long story shorter, over the next few days we had a lot of fun debating, playing Ultimate Frisbee, basketball, football, and just meeting debate and speech people from across America (my favorite group was region seven - great debaters, great Ultimate Frisbee players). We ended up not breaking to the outrounds in debate even though I thought we did pretty good in all six rounds. We could have easily won two of the ones that we ended up losing but things like that happen. All I know is we did our best job and things just didn't work out in our favor. Sometimes you get unlucky (some debate touny's come down to a coin-flip, or a judge can vote on a non existent stock issue) and we just happened to be the unlucky ones this time. Regardless of all that, every single round that we debated in was very fun and I really enjoyed it.

(debate pictures - none of us) (general nationals photos)

Saturday, while on our way back to the airport, we decided to stop in Austin for a hour to see the state capitol building. It turned out that just at the same time as we arrived there was a protest on illegal immigration going on outside and on the steps the capitol building. There were speakers shouting into microphones about the evils of illegals and just a little bit removed from the main protest group, counter - pro illegal's protesters screaming about the raciest anti illegal immigration protesters. I really wish I had brought the video camera...

(pictures of the protest) (pictures of the capitol)

And by the way. Why does the Texas flag bear so much of a resemblance to the French flag?

Back

Well, I'm back. More to come on the trip and tournament as soon as I wake up.

New Resolution!

Resolve that America should change it's approach to illegal immigration.

Debate, Debate, Debate

The end nears. Nationals is less then two weeks away....

Aidan and I (along with Peter) spent last Friday and Saturday getting together with some of the other team policy debate teams from our region who also qualified for Nationals. We basically debated, talked about debate, talked about debate evidence, and most importantly played basketball. I'm pretty sure we're sending a good group of debaters down to Texas to compete at Nats; but our basketball team isn't bad either. Regions 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 - you're dead panda bear (in football you're cooked goose or cream cheese, depending on your preference)

To see video of the amazing game click here

Regionals

With some luck (we won two coin tosses in the outrounds) and God's help we qualified for Nationals and won the regional tournament. I'm still really tired right now so I'll write more about it later but I just thought I should let you'll know.

EXTRA! EXTRA!

TASH + PARTNER ARE 2007 NCFCA REGION 10 DEBATE CHAMPS!

Congratulations Tash & Bro! I suppose all that hard work over the summer writing your book (+ prayer) has paid off.

Off to Debate

I'm going to be gone for the next few days at a debate tournament. So unless Rex decides to do something unusual like post (?), their won't be anything new here at least till Sat. night.

Days 2 & 3 - Debating and Waiting

Really simply - on Saturday I woke up and debated for the rest of the day. The rounds went like this -

Round 1 - Negative vs NATO Banning Depleted Uranium: We won, sort of a easy case to go up against....

Round 2 - Negative vs Stopping Expansion: Again, we won. I was really hoping that we would be able to go up against this case sometime.

Round 3- Affirmative: Win, the judge said that we just squeak by with a victory. I thought that we had a chance of both losing and winning this debate depending on some of the main issues so not to much of a surprise with the decision. It really could have gone either way though.

Round 4 - Negative vs GDP Defense Capability's 2.5% reform: Win, Aff. team ended up finishing in second place overall in the tournament.

Round 5 - Affirmative: Loss! At the beginning of this debate we were getting killed but we managed to almost tie it up in the rebuttal's. Close debate but I agree with the judges decision that we lost. The Negative team ended up winning first place in the tournament....

Round 6- Affirmative: Win! Wrap up the day by debating a first year team. Probably was the easiest debate of the day but I still feel really tired.

The teams that broke to the outrounds were announced the next morning and it ended up that that by brother Peter and his partner broke along with Eric and Aaron C. and Aidan and I. We faced the Coopers in the quarterfinals and they won on a 2-1 decision. We had actually talked on the way up about having a feeling that we were going to debate each other in the tournament.... I though that they deserved to win and we could have won as well but when you get to the outrounds many debates between good teams are so close that most turn out like that anyways. I was almost glad that we lost because I was just so tired from the previous days debates and really didn't have much energy to debate with anyways. I ended up watching some of the simifinals and correctly guessed the voting decision (2-1) on the debate I watched one minute debate began. I could tell that the judges didn't like the case by the way they tilted their heads when the 1AC speaker talked (really! I'm not kidding). After a great final round that was very enjoyable to watch there was the awards session. As far as speaker awards Aidan finished as the 8th overall speaker at the tournament and I finished in 2d place. Our group (counting the Eric and Aaron who are unofficial members of our club....) took three out of the top eight team placements. Peter and his partner Steven H. came in 7th place, Aaron and Eric 4th, and Aidan and myself 5th. Grace also won a award for being one of the top timers and Irgrid won the sweepstakes for bottle consumption.In the end the tournament was probably one of the most fun I have ever been to in my three years of doing debate (even more then when we won 1st place last year). There really wasn't any huge pressure to win and we really just had a lot of fun debating good teams.

Day 1 - WestEastern Ho!

On Thursday afternoon the debating group in our family (you know who they are - Peter, Aidan - my Mom, - sister, G. Ingrid and myself) headed up to Syracuse, New York for a debate tournament. On the way we picked up some friends (Eric and Aaron C.) who were also going to debate at the Syracuse tournament. Eric C. is a rabid Red Sox's and Patriots fan so we had plenty to talk (or argue.... think Red Sox.... pray that he will one day see how bad the Sox's are and repent and become a Yankees fan....) about on the trip - including figuring out who's going to draft who in the NFL draft.... After I started gettting a headache and becoming carsick from turning around talking to Eric and Peter about sports - I discussed debate theory and the NATO topic with Aaron C. and Aidan. As expected, about five hours of driving we finally reached the Syracuse area. We stopped at Chittenango Falls State Park for a few minutes and took pictures and jumped off the huge waterfall. After drying off we headed over to where we would be staying during the tournament - our friends and fellow debaters the Claghorns - house (actually at a friends of the Claghorns house). After being shocked to find out that the Clag's were Buffalo Bills fan, we all cried for a few hours and then went outside and beat each other up in a football game. My team ended up losing (by a touchdown) - but we did have the small disadvantage of having five to four less players then the other team..... On one play that I was quarterback I was scrambling away from the (negative teams....) blitz when I hit a muddy spot and literally went flying. Both feet and arms in the air for about 10 seconds then "SLAM".... When I hit the ground the football just popped out of my hand and rolled away and I didn't feel like really getting up. On another play there was a fumble and I was the "first" one to recover it but it slipped/slammed out of my hands and the pileup for the football ended up a few feet away from where I was. Undaunted - I jumped into the new pile and ended up digging the football out for my team anyways.... As Dan Rather would say, "courage." And don't ask me why he would say that. He just would.

Some pictures from day 1

If you can read then this picture doesn't need a caption

Likewise

The media swarms

Could he be preparing to dive? Diving off the waterfall is surprisingly not recommended by most experts. It can cause minor headaches and temporary cause you to see stars that don't really exist.

The waterfall

"Row, row, row your boat, merrily down the stream.... "

Under the bridge leading up to the falls

We arrive in Buffalo Bills country

A shot of the amazingly dramatic football game

Day two coming up next

Back!

Got back at 12:30 last night - post on the tournament upcoming....

Once Again

Off too a debate tournament for a few days.

SUN

Well.... if you haven't noticed I've been a little busy recently. As I wrote below (about seven days ago....) I had an debate tournament from last Thursday to Saturday. The tournament's name is SUN and don't ask me what SUN stands for because I have no idea. Last year we won first place at this same tournament so there was a little bit of pressure to at least do "ok" this time as well. Our record for the first 6 rounds that decide whether you get into the "playoffs" or outrounds was 5 and 1 with our one lose being our first round vs what would turn out the 2d best team in the tournament and they ended up with a 6 & 0 record in the first 6 rounds so..... yeah..... nothing to cry about. Once we got into the outrounds we lasted through first round and the second but went down blazing in the third (semi-finals) and ended up finishing in third place.


Ironically enough we only lost to one team in the whole tournament (we lost our first debate to the team and then 9 debates, three days later got eliminated by the same team) and both debates from my view were very close so I have to say that SUN went very well even though we didn't repeat as #1. That really wasn't our goal along though. We really just wanted to get into the top 4 and see what happen from there.... so I guess you could say it was a success.

Busy, Busy, Busy....

I have a debate tournament for the next three days so don't expect an influx of posting anytime soon.... The reason why I've neglected to post recently is also due to the time I am spending on debate. Researching fascinating subjects such as national sovereignty, military interoperability etc. Really is it fun? Not really; but losing isn't that fun either....

Things Heating Up (in the debate world)

Has anyone heard of global freezing? It's happening. I saw it myself. This morning when I was outside feeding the sheep I happened to look down and this this little bug frozen to the ground. He was dead as a Apple computer. He was killed by Global Freezing. Let us have a moment of silence in his memory.

Ok - I made that all up.

On the other side of the universe.... Debate has been just eating my time up. So far the season has gone very well - but it's all worth nothing real right now because every round (18?) we've done so far has been a practice debate. However - from now on everything counts. If we lose - we really lose. And if we win - we'll need to win some more. Winning is always nice for the most part though. . . .

Non Football Post

This is a non football related post. Warning. Do not choke on it. It is made up of small parts that can be swallowed by anyone including small children.

According to weather.com there is a chance that we could actually get some snow Tuesday. My only question is what's snow? Is it that anthrax looking stuff?

The last time it snowed (an the only time so far) was December 4. That means it hasn't snowed for 43 straight days.

I've been researching NATO all year due to the fact that it's the NCFCA debate topic but my partner (Aidan) and I still haven't totally figured out what case we're going to do. Last year we just almost randomly chose one and did pretty well with it but this year we're looking for the almost perfect one. It's not like we're reforming the UN though.... that would be fun....