Tag: debate

  • Teaching Keeps You Honest

    Image via Wikipedia This week I am teaching my Worlds debate class, and the group I have is pretty impressive. All quite sharp, all very interested, and all excited to learn the art of debate. I started as I usually do by showing the WUDC Koc Worlds Final round – a round that many still…

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  • UK Tour Workshop

    We hosted the British touring team this year and they presented an amazing workshop to our New York City debating family. This workshop is titled “Deep Strategy,” and has a lot of great ideas for people at any level of WUDC debating.  It was held at the King’s College in the Empire State Building. This…

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  • American Debate Sediment 1: Student Judging

    There are several issues standing in the way of the creation of an American national circuit of WUDC debating. All of them are quite serious issues, and they are going to take a generation to fix. Fix? Not really the right word. Brush away, clear away, something like that. For these are best considered a…

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  • Public Debate: Arab Spring

    <iframe src=”http://player.vimeo.com/video/29840075?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0″ width=”400″ height=”300″ frameborder=”0″ webkitAllowFullScreen allowFullScreen></iframe><p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/29840075″>Public Debate: Arab Spring demonstrates American Youth have a lot to learn from Arabic Youth</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user1253612″>Steve Llano</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p> This is a public debate we participated in recently in Virginia. While watching it, it made me think of a couple of interesting things about teaching…

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  • South African Nationals

    Image via WikipediaThe South African Debate Nationals are in full swing. Here are the motions so far, all from Twitter. Round 1: This House Supports Wal-Mart’s Expansion into Africa. Round 2: This House would create a regulated market for rhino horn. Round 3: This House regrets the partition of Sudan. Round 4: This House would…

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  • The Hazards of Video

    I love taking a lot of video, but there are always dangers to it. I’m about to go to Texas. I might not post as frequently as I have been, but I will most likely be updating with some video posts, as I like to do when I travel. One of the highlights of this…

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  • Cable TV

    Sometimes I’m ambivalent that I chose to live without cable. But this article showed me a pretty good reason not to have it. Apparently, the DVR/Cable box uses as much energy as a refrigerator. The trend toward always on, always on the starting line devices is something that is both expensive, and a bit troubling.…

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  • Style and Performance and Argument

    Image via Wikipedia Lama Tsony on Crazy Wisdom Crazy Wisdom is a new film about the life of Chogyam Trunga. I like this piece from Tricycle because of the metaphor – “he embodied a quality of fearlessness that was like licking honey off a razor blade.” Getting the best out of a precarious and harmful situation…

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  • New CA/Tab Website for American Debate

    It was designed to hopefully increase diversity in tournament administration. We have the same people (mostly Tuna Snider and myself) running all the Worlds divisions on the East Coast, and I’d like to put a stop to that. More diversity means better, more diverse debates via more diverse topics, and a different eye reading feedback…

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  • The New York Public Library vs. Big Media

    http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library_babel_fish/how_libraries_trump_big_media A must read for all of you Economist addicts out there. Commercial media just doesn’t hold up well when compared to public organizations that do information literacy right. Do you go to the library? Or do you leaf through the Economist on the way to the tournament? The difference is between the athlete who…

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