Author: Steve

  • The Best Structural Change Would be to Stop Debating

    The Commission on Presidential Debates released a statement about yesterday’s Presidential debate, seemingly unaware that they are the reason the debate was so poor. Here’s the text: The Commission on Presidential Debates sponsors televised debates for the benefit of the American electorate. Last night’s debate made clear that additional structure should be added to the…

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  • Is It Time To Abandon The Presidential Debates?

    After last night’s performance, many of us are wondering about the state of our politics and our leaders. We are worried about the state of political discourse in the United States. We are experiencing, or have experienced alienation from close friends and dear family members over acerbic speech. And the debate, the Nationally televised, globally…

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  • Three Movements in the Teaching of Uncertainty Rhetoric

    I’ve been talking a lot about writing process with a friend, from the start of composition and generation of ideas to the way that a thesis gets mapped out, or at least how I do it. So through these conversations about something totally unrelated to this post, I’ve been thinking that most ideas for an…

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  • An Idea for Using Everyday Photos in Teaching Speech

    It’s always usually at the 1/3 of the semester mark that I start to think about the class I’d rather be teaching, rather than the one that I am actually teaching. I keep a notebook of all these ideas for future ways to organize and orient the class, but these ideas never look very good…

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  • Debate and/is/as A Singularity

    One of my most read essays is one that was unanimously rejected from every editor who has had a look at it. I’ve imagined re-writing it recently in order to make it a bit more publishable. I figure since it’s circulated a bit it might be able to find a journal home for a while,…

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  • Is a Livestream Class a Good Idea? Doesn’t Seem to be for Me

    Not a big fan of the livestreamed class, but I did one anyway yesterday. I don’t really care for the livestream as there’s a lot of stuff that gets in the way of teaching here. Typically I could do a 10 to 15 minute video on a reading and be fine with it. But the…

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  • A New-ish Course Description for Argumentation

    And a new way to describe it

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  • A Course Description for a Class About Argumentation

    A friend of mine clued me into a new program called Gitbook, which is sort of like a blog, but more of a private journal/documentation site. I signed up for one, but not sure if I am going to use it. It might be a great place to keep notes on the classes I’m currently…

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  • Don’t Globalize the Journalist Epistemology

    The globalization of the scientific epistemology is a daunting problem, but no less significant is the attraction of the journalistic epistemology. They might work hand in hand.  The journalistic epistemology is the comfortable, common-sense idea that if you want to know something you go to the place where that thing is happening and you ask…

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  • Evidence-Based Debate

    American policy debate fundamentalists have found a new phrase to martial in their panicked defense of their practices. I don’t know why they feel so threatened; policy debate can easily co-exist with many different debating styles. But fundamentalism ensures that there is an either/or, a very significant conflict where the stakes are the highest they…

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