Round 3: Cedar Rapids Washington v. Gulliver Prep
NEG: Gulliver Prep.
I really enjoyed this round; it confirmed my intuition that impact turn debates aren’t particularly strategic for the affirmative but make debates better by forcing clash. I consciously elected to award high points to reward intricate line by line clash that provides a useful contrast with robotically scripted and only approximately responsive rebuttals. Every debater in the room did at least one unusually smart thing, although no one was flawless.
CRWashington’s ahead on risk analysis. The 2NR neglects any comparison between the case and the disad at his peril. He escapes peril in this case, however, because there’s simply no appreciable solvency deficit to the feed-in tariff counterplan.
The affirmative assertions of a solvency deficit, generally don’t derive from evidence and have to compete with good, if underhighlighted, negative evidence. I strongly suspect that this Gipe evidence would be much better as one long card instead of several 1-2 line cards – you aren’t billing by the card here, folks. It’s good, though. It makes an explicit comparison between production tax credits and a feed-in tariff.
Paternalism and trust doctrine deficits receive the most airplay in the 2AR. However, I can’t isolate a particular piece of evidence which provides a unique (or, indeed, any) warrant for tying those concepts to a production tax credit. Washington’s evidence here provides a general link to economic self-determination, but no basis for comparison between these two mechanisms. Perhaps I’m missing something, but my reading of all the evidence leads me to believe that Gulliver really has the goods here. Washington solves many of the problems with the previously cyclical character of the production tax credit – but Gulliver’s cards incline me to believe that some of the perceptual problems can’t easily be addressed. It’s better to wipe the slate clean and start with a new mechanism entirely, given the potential sedimentation of negative investor perception. A feed-in tariff would also apparently better distribute resources within Native American communities as well, whereas production tax credits seem to accrue with the most privileged members of that community; only some have already built up enough capital to merit taxation.
This evidence evaluation compels me to two conclusions about the affirmative’s strategic choices. I’ll start from the premise that you sensed trouble here coming out of the 1NC.
First, the choice to straight impact turn in the 2AC was smart. Secondly, the choice to emphasize the case to the exclusion of deep development on the disad in the 2AR, while well executed, was suboptimal. I think you should have ditched the case vs. counterplan debate entirely. It’s served its function – you need to narrow this debate to a winnable point of offense, and the cards are more even on prolif than they are on the solvency deficit debate.
Time pressure resolves most of the impact turn debate on prolif. I don’t have a clear extension of this opaque prolif story in the 1AR. Gulliver doesn’t either. There’s even some internal controversy on this subject among the Wash debaters in the postround. Even if the argument’s in, I default to the specificity of their internal link – the Proliferation Security Initiative’s qualitatively different from the generic “proliferation control” presumed by CR Washington’s creaky old impact turns. Superior time allocation gives the 2NR space for substantive development on bounded rationality and the increased risk of accidents. I ultimately vote negative on risk of accidents outweighs the near-zero risk of a solvency deficit. Militarism might show some promise, but receives half a sentence of development as the timer expires. That explanatory gap compels me to default to the 2NR’s link explanation; proliferation probably increases militarism.
Good round overall. The crucial big-picture decisions come from the 2NR, when he intelligently elects to use the permutation to kick out of one impact turned disad (the 1AR enables this) and the 2AR, when she elects to devote the bulk of her speech to a solvency deficit on which she’s fighting at an evidentiary disadvantage.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
EMORY HS Tournament Round 2: BRONX v. UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF NASHVILLE
EMORY HS Tournament Round 2: BRONX v. UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF NASHVILLE
Negative: Bronx.
RFD: Politics outweighs the case.
This risk assignation appears clean and technical.
2AR risk analysis, while compelling, is shamelessly new. The 1AR drops the block’s risk comparison. This problem’s compounded by an unresponsive 2AR. For example, the 2AR explains the importance of historical analysis in evaluation of risk, which we’ve never heard before in this debate, while ignoring the 2NR’s moral imperative claim. The 2AR advances very intelligent risk analysis, but it’s just utterly new.
The affirmative can try several strategies avoid this deep hole:
a. Prevention – engage risk analysis early and often. Make sure that the 1AR sketches the arguments that the 2AR needs.
b. Deception – even if the 2AR is new, try to incorporate some actual argument from the 1AR into the new arguments, so they sound old. It’s difficult to ferret out every sub-line of analysis. “Embedded clash,” by minimizing signposting, often enhances rebuttalists’ latitude to make new arguments. You need some process of reference – a 50/50 old/new ratio works much, much better than /100.
c. Engagement – issue at least some justification for new risk analysis. Standard rationalizations might include:
i. Last rebuttals exist to issue new risk analysis – otherwise, they’d just be repetition. Moving that process into the constructives actually damages argument development by accelerating the negative’s block advantage.
ii. The 2NR issues some new risk analysis, which demands new answers on my part – they opened the door. (This is generally more effective than c.i.)
iii. Here’s our risk analysis that’s built into the 1AC – that isn’t really new because the aff doesn’t ever go away.
I think you might do that with the survivability of the toothfish? I don’t get it, though. Toothfish will survive a nuclear war, sure. I don’t think that they’ll re-evolve into humans…is there a reason that I should discount a more likely extinction scenario from Bronx, as long as I know that the biosphere will still have some toothfish around? This isn’t an intuitively appealing position, so it would need to be fleshed out over 3-4 sentences for me to get on board to wherever you want this toothfish train to go.
The aff doesn’t mitigate the disad at all on the micro level either. Risk analysis might not be enough for Bronx if USN won some hot defense. That’s not happening here. The 2AR argues that the aff doesn’t’ affect health care lobbies, which overwhelm. That seems trivial. Some external factors may influence this debate, but they aren’t entirely determinative. The card you reference certainly doesn’t preclude a substantial or outcome-determinative role for political capital. The aff only needs to affect one factor to determine the overall outcome of the debate, despite a plethora of possible alternate causations. I didn’t take enough notes on your uniqueness evidence, but it was short and underexplained as time expired.
You may win a risk of this addon, but you just don’t win enough defense to overwhelm dropped risk comparison.
Comments:
POSTROUND: BRONX, OMG, you are the worst imaginable team in terms of watching the judge. You will both generally wander out of the round at the same time and immediately make several phone calls within minutes of the 2AR’s conclusion. I have seen you do this before, and you really need to stop. The phone calls smack of arrogance; it seems to imply that you’re so convinced you’re ahead that you can catch up on your social life. They’re also just distracting. More importantly, I call for cards over a few minutes, instead of immediately issuing all my card requests. Therefore, when you both leave, it slows down the whole process for no good reason. Just keep one person in the round to look at the judge and file evidence while the other person makes phone calls in the hall. You can flip for it?
Some incidental comments:
1AC: Faster
1AC C-X: The 1AC must be Scripture to you. You must know each piece of evidence. You frequently refer to “some card” – in one embarrassing sequence, neither affirmative speaker can identify a 1AC card by date or citation.
2AC: I know this is a minor pet peeve, but “literally” means “the opposite of metaphorically,” as opposed to “very.”
Example: “My evidence is literally on fire.”
means
“My evidence is actually burning and requires a fire extinguisher.”
as opposed to
“My evidence is so awesome!”
You’ve taken to using “literally” as a filler word, producing several cringeworthy sequences in which you reverse its meaning.
Negative: Bronx.
RFD: Politics outweighs the case.
This risk assignation appears clean and technical.
2AR risk analysis, while compelling, is shamelessly new. The 1AR drops the block’s risk comparison. This problem’s compounded by an unresponsive 2AR. For example, the 2AR explains the importance of historical analysis in evaluation of risk, which we’ve never heard before in this debate, while ignoring the 2NR’s moral imperative claim. The 2AR advances very intelligent risk analysis, but it’s just utterly new.
The affirmative can try several strategies avoid this deep hole:
a. Prevention – engage risk analysis early and often. Make sure that the 1AR sketches the arguments that the 2AR needs.
b. Deception – even if the 2AR is new, try to incorporate some actual argument from the 1AR into the new arguments, so they sound old. It’s difficult to ferret out every sub-line of analysis. “Embedded clash,” by minimizing signposting, often enhances rebuttalists’ latitude to make new arguments. You need some process of reference – a 50/50 old/new ratio works much, much better than /100.
c. Engagement – issue at least some justification for new risk analysis. Standard rationalizations might include:
i. Last rebuttals exist to issue new risk analysis – otherwise, they’d just be repetition. Moving that process into the constructives actually damages argument development by accelerating the negative’s block advantage.
ii. The 2NR issues some new risk analysis, which demands new answers on my part – they opened the door. (This is generally more effective than c.i.)
iii. Here’s our risk analysis that’s built into the 1AC – that isn’t really new because the aff doesn’t ever go away.
I think you might do that with the survivability of the toothfish? I don’t get it, though. Toothfish will survive a nuclear war, sure. I don’t think that they’ll re-evolve into humans…is there a reason that I should discount a more likely extinction scenario from Bronx, as long as I know that the biosphere will still have some toothfish around? This isn’t an intuitively appealing position, so it would need to be fleshed out over 3-4 sentences for me to get on board to wherever you want this toothfish train to go.
The aff doesn’t mitigate the disad at all on the micro level either. Risk analysis might not be enough for Bronx if USN won some hot defense. That’s not happening here. The 2AR argues that the aff doesn’t’ affect health care lobbies, which overwhelm. That seems trivial. Some external factors may influence this debate, but they aren’t entirely determinative. The card you reference certainly doesn’t preclude a substantial or outcome-determinative role for political capital. The aff only needs to affect one factor to determine the overall outcome of the debate, despite a plethora of possible alternate causations. I didn’t take enough notes on your uniqueness evidence, but it was short and underexplained as time expired.
You may win a risk of this addon, but you just don’t win enough defense to overwhelm dropped risk comparison.
Comments:
POSTROUND: BRONX, OMG, you are the worst imaginable team in terms of watching the judge. You will both generally wander out of the round at the same time and immediately make several phone calls within minutes of the 2AR’s conclusion. I have seen you do this before, and you really need to stop. The phone calls smack of arrogance; it seems to imply that you’re so convinced you’re ahead that you can catch up on your social life. They’re also just distracting. More importantly, I call for cards over a few minutes, instead of immediately issuing all my card requests. Therefore, when you both leave, it slows down the whole process for no good reason. Just keep one person in the round to look at the judge and file evidence while the other person makes phone calls in the hall. You can flip for it?
Some incidental comments:
1AC: Faster
1AC C-X: The 1AC must be Scripture to you. You must know each piece of evidence. You frequently refer to “some card” – in one embarrassing sequence, neither affirmative speaker can identify a 1AC card by date or citation.
2AC: I know this is a minor pet peeve, but “literally” means “the opposite of metaphorically,” as opposed to “very.”
Example: “My evidence is literally on fire.”
means
“My evidence is actually burning and requires a fire extinguisher.”
as opposed to
“My evidence is so awesome!”
You’ve taken to using “literally” as a filler word, producing several cringeworthy sequences in which you reverse its meaning.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Round 5: USC - Cal BoWe AFF v. MictSt KiKl Neg
RFD:
Cal exploits the internal link/over-uniqueness hole in politics effectively, reducing the risk of politics to within the margin of error. There's no strong evidentiary or analytic support for the premise that the stimulus bill could potentially fail. For the purposes of this debate, the stimulus bill will pass either way. Although Michigan State wins a very large chunk of their counterplan solvency, the possibility that the plan will fill in some gaps in trade signal effectiveness is measurably larger than the near-zero politics risk.
The 2NC neglects this question entirely. The subsequent cross-examination goes poorly for the negative - there's no coherent explanation of the disad's plausibility aside from a few references to evidence. The 2A rehearses some of the warrants for the inevitable passage of the stimulus bill, and the 2N doesn't have an answer. C-X is rarely dispositive for me, but, in this case, it magnifies the weight I'm willing to assign a press.
The 2N does display good situational awareness by instructing the 1NR to read evidence to fill in this link hole; this sequencing does, however, really confines you to the 1NR "democratic unity" evidence.
That evidence - specifically the Hill 12/24 evidence - isn't enough. It establishes that there will be an internal debate over the CONTOURS of the final bill. It doesn't even suggest, however, that the internal debate threatens the PASSAGE of a stimulus bill in any form. The impact, as articulated, only applies to passage, not controversy during passage or different varieties of a stimulus package.
I scour the remainder of the link and relevant internal link evidence in order to at least examine the most generous possible reading for Michigan State. The aff's probably politically unpopular, but there's no
stimulus-specific internal link evidence. I'm handed these Cochran cards - I'm not terribly sure that the 2NR extends them, but they wouldn't help much regardless, as the internal link doesn't relate Cochran's general power to some crucial role in passing an endangered stimulus package.
The affirmative also does a better job of framing my evaluation. I'm fairly agnostic on the relative size of the margin of error. Put more simply, I don't know if a very low risk of politics should be taken seriously or not. I do know that the 2AR speaks to this question, however, and the 2NR does not.
I give some thought to assigning a very low risk of the disad but still voting negative, as the CP does effectively solve the bulk of the aff. I think, though, that cotton's unique symbolic status and the possibility of a trade collapse while the FTAAP talks are gearing up create a small but statistically significant risk of the case harms that the perm captures better than the CP in isolation.
Two postround questions from MSU -
a. Isn't double solvency stupid?
Well, not really. It's probably stupid lingo, but there's a legitimate idea expressed through the formulation. The CP likely solves trade, but it isn't 100% so the perm insures against the small but real possibility of FTAAP breakdown. I guess that's more accurately expressed as "more certain solvency."
b. Should I have gone for more case defense in the 2NR?
Maybe. That's hard to say. Your politics risk is nonzero, but very small - you would need to push the case awfully close to zero to win this way. I tend to think,that you'd just be better off shoring up the weak point of the politics disad. You could do that by reading more and better evidence on this overuniqueness question - and you could even do it by better storytelling. I'm down with either cards or narrative extrapolation on p'tix, but you must have at least one of those two.
some speech comments:
1AC: The 1AC is fine. A few possibilities for improvement:
a. Your trade evidence is geriatric. The Doha negotiations are ongoing. I didn't hear much, if any, evidence from December or January, and I think that would be helpful. I also wish that more evidence addressed the role of the WTO in resolving the current global economic crisis. There aren't many
new affs on this topic - we should consistently rewrite the few we're allowed to run.
b. Oversegmentation. You distinguish and number four internal links, but they don't sound terribly distinct to me. When the negative reads fairly general defense on trade, I don't see how the proliferation of internal links allows the 2AC to quickly dismiss swaths of defense. I might be mistaken - I think, though, that if you want to meaningfully distinguish advantage components, it might behoove you to seperate out impacts for subscenarios and cluster them with the independent links.
1NC:
Your clarity improves through the speech. You start off mushy and end up crisp. This is a morning round. I think the object lesson's that you should try to get in a couple of minutes of speaking at some point prior to the round.
A theoretical note:
I'm starting to sour on these massively multi-plank conditional counterplans. I understand their tactical value, of course. I'm not strident in either direction on this - I'm just progressing toward a zone in which I might vote on conditionality, given the way in which multiplank cond CPs force the 2AC to deal with a factorial range of block policy options. In past years, the aff had very little chance when running conditionality bad in front of me. I'm working my way back to the middle on this question.
2AC:
These internal case overviews don't appear to advance the argument - they're largely just a recap of what happened previously. These sorts of explanations only seem rational to me when you're distinguishing away from some component of their argument. As it stands, they just generate the impression that you're unconvinced that I was paying attention during the 1AC.
2NC:
You're good on components of the debate - you work diligently and well on risk comparison, for example. I'm not sure why you dismiss this question that's ultimately decisive, though. you display good situational awareness by taking a little prep and making the 1NR read some cards on this issue. You should have done more of this, though, and taken slightly more prep to pull even more cards and possibly script out a few additional answers.
The rest of my speech by speech feelings can, hopefully, be deduced from the RFD. Feel free to email me with any additional questions.
Good round!
Cal exploits the internal link/over-uniqueness hole in politics effectively, reducing the risk of politics to within the margin of error. There's no strong evidentiary or analytic support for the premise that the stimulus bill could potentially fail. For the purposes of this debate, the stimulus bill will pass either way. Although Michigan State wins a very large chunk of their counterplan solvency, the possibility that the plan will fill in some gaps in trade signal effectiveness is measurably larger than the near-zero politics risk.
The 2NC neglects this question entirely. The subsequent cross-examination goes poorly for the negative - there's no coherent explanation of the disad's plausibility aside from a few references to evidence. The 2A rehearses some of the warrants for the inevitable passage of the stimulus bill, and the 2N doesn't have an answer. C-X is rarely dispositive for me, but, in this case, it magnifies the weight I'm willing to assign a press.
The 2N does display good situational awareness by instructing the 1NR to read evidence to fill in this link hole; this sequencing does, however, really confines you to the 1NR "democratic unity" evidence.
That evidence - specifically the Hill 12/24 evidence - isn't enough. It establishes that there will be an internal debate over the CONTOURS of the final bill. It doesn't even suggest, however, that the internal debate threatens the PASSAGE of a stimulus bill in any form. The impact, as articulated, only applies to passage, not controversy during passage or different varieties of a stimulus package.
I scour the remainder of the link and relevant internal link evidence in order to at least examine the most generous possible reading for Michigan State. The aff's probably politically unpopular, but there's no
stimulus-specific internal link evidence. I'm handed these Cochran cards - I'm not terribly sure that the 2NR extends them, but they wouldn't help much regardless, as the internal link doesn't relate Cochran's general power to some crucial role in passing an endangered stimulus package.
The affirmative also does a better job of framing my evaluation. I'm fairly agnostic on the relative size of the margin of error. Put more simply, I don't know if a very low risk of politics should be taken seriously or not. I do know that the 2AR speaks to this question, however, and the 2NR does not.
I give some thought to assigning a very low risk of the disad but still voting negative, as the CP does effectively solve the bulk of the aff. I think, though, that cotton's unique symbolic status and the possibility of a trade collapse while the FTAAP talks are gearing up create a small but statistically significant risk of the case harms that the perm captures better than the CP in isolation.
Two postround questions from MSU -
a. Isn't double solvency stupid?
Well, not really. It's probably stupid lingo, but there's a legitimate idea expressed through the formulation. The CP likely solves trade, but it isn't 100% so the perm insures against the small but real possibility of FTAAP breakdown. I guess that's more accurately expressed as "more certain solvency."
b. Should I have gone for more case defense in the 2NR?
Maybe. That's hard to say. Your politics risk is nonzero, but very small - you would need to push the case awfully close to zero to win this way. I tend to think,that you'd just be better off shoring up the weak point of the politics disad. You could do that by reading more and better evidence on this overuniqueness question - and you could even do it by better storytelling. I'm down with either cards or narrative extrapolation on p'tix, but you must have at least one of those two.
some speech comments:
1AC: The 1AC is fine. A few possibilities for improvement:
a. Your trade evidence is geriatric. The Doha negotiations are ongoing. I didn't hear much, if any, evidence from December or January, and I think that would be helpful. I also wish that more evidence addressed the role of the WTO in resolving the current global economic crisis. There aren't many
new affs on this topic - we should consistently rewrite the few we're allowed to run.
b. Oversegmentation. You distinguish and number four internal links, but they don't sound terribly distinct to me. When the negative reads fairly general defense on trade, I don't see how the proliferation of internal links allows the 2AC to quickly dismiss swaths of defense. I might be mistaken - I think, though, that if you want to meaningfully distinguish advantage components, it might behoove you to seperate out impacts for subscenarios and cluster them with the independent links.
1NC:
Your clarity improves through the speech. You start off mushy and end up crisp. This is a morning round. I think the object lesson's that you should try to get in a couple of minutes of speaking at some point prior to the round.
A theoretical note:
I'm starting to sour on these massively multi-plank conditional counterplans. I understand their tactical value, of course. I'm not strident in either direction on this - I'm just progressing toward a zone in which I might vote on conditionality, given the way in which multiplank cond CPs force the 2AC to deal with a factorial range of block policy options. In past years, the aff had very little chance when running conditionality bad in front of me. I'm working my way back to the middle on this question.
2AC:
These internal case overviews don't appear to advance the argument - they're largely just a recap of what happened previously. These sorts of explanations only seem rational to me when you're distinguishing away from some component of their argument. As it stands, they just generate the impression that you're unconvinced that I was paying attention during the 1AC.
2NC:
You're good on components of the debate - you work diligently and well on risk comparison, for example. I'm not sure why you dismiss this question that's ultimately decisive, though. you display good situational awareness by taking a little prep and making the 1NR read some cards on this issue. You should have done more of this, though, and taken slightly more prep to pull even more cards and possibly script out a few additional answers.
The rest of my speech by speech feelings can, hopefully, be deduced from the RFD. Feel free to email me with any additional questions.
Good round!
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