Author: Steve

  • Jealous Much?

    http://fav.me/dczaw2 After reading this piece on “erisology” in The Atlantic my thoughts instantly went to one of my favorite pieces of writing when I think about the impossibility of civil political argument. “Homer’s Contest” by Friedrich Nietzche. In this piece, Nietzsche spells out the relationship the ancient Greeks had with competition and how a competitive…

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  • I like to make videos

    This is a video I made for my online public speaking class addressing some of the things that after two formal presentations they still need to work on. The biggest problem in teaching speech and debating is the problem of performing to teacher expectations which expect students to exceed teacher expectations. This is the problem…

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  • Music

    I have been using Last FM for over 10 years now – a couple of students of mine from 2007 clued me into it and I haven’t really left. There was one year where I didn’t record any listening stats of my music, mostly because it was too difficult to do it (I was using…

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  • Ballance and Praxis in the Argumentation Curriculum

    Me preparing my lecture for teaching mid-century NDT debate for class I’m tagging all the posts about my emergency last-minute pick up argumentation class with the tag “pick up” so you can easily search for them if you want updates on how that’s going. This is one of them. The only reasonable approach that I…

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  • When Only A Sport Remains

    I predict here in a short amount of time I’ll be posting some definitive news about a move happening in intercollegiate forensics and debate that will no-doubt signal the end of any sort of conflict between educationally-minded directors of debate and those who love prizes, trophies, and saying that they coached a team to win…

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  • March is for Visitors

    Before we get into it, here’s my current obsession. I wonder why I share any of my Last FM listening stats with anyone because all you will see is me grinding a song into oblivion by listening to it over and over and over again. Today I’ve reached the point where I’m just listening to…

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  • The Goals of an Argumentation Course

    Argumentation pedagogy is, unfortunately, homogenous across nearly the entire speech communication discipline. A textbook based on the Toulmin model – but not even the whole model, just data, warrant, and claim – and no discussion of field dependency is at the heart of it. A paper about a controversy and then the fabled “Letter to…

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  • Spring Break Ended, Sadly

    Spring break ended too soon but I did get one final draft out and have another one underway. We’ll see if I can make the NCA deadline. I get a lot out of NCA but it comes out of the cracks. It’s not a direct path to the value of it. I always have a…

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  • The Start of Spring Break

    Spring break is here and the only thing I’ve done so far is play about 5 hours of Fallout 76 before getting ready to go out to eat at one of my favorite spots before hitting a bar to wish a friend happy birthday. There is a productive hope for spring break including: Finishing my…

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