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Cool feature of “General Onefile” database

July 23rd, 2010 Scott Phillips No comments

There is a button on the right side that says “download as mp3″ which you can use to download a computer voice reading the article.

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Debate in the news

July 23rd, 2010 Scott Phillips No comments

There was a frontpage article in the AJC about the Emory debate camp recently.

You can read it here

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Explanation of the Judge Hypothetical

July 17th, 2010 Scott Phillips 10 comments

A while back I combined 2 concepts in my mind

1. Judge philosophies are for the most part totally useless. Most of them read exactly the same “i’ll vote for anything if you explain it well etc”. Even the few that break from this mold are usually a series of opinions followed by “however, these are just my defaults, I will ignore them based on arguments in a debate”.

2. There doesn’t seem to be a better way to get the crucial information you need as a debater out of a judges head. Asking questions before the debate usually yields more of the same-  a bland, flavorless mush of information not helpful for you to adapt.

Read more…

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K answers wave 1

July 16th, 2010 Scott Phillips 4 comments

Topics covered

-top level nonsense like value to life/ontology etc
-security
-IR Fem
-china threat
-zizek
-schmitt

Aff K Final- Wave 2

Big thanks to all those who emailed in cards/files/cites

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Inception- Debate PSA

July 16th, 2010 Scott Phillips 7 comments

Inception was a great movie. Please don’t ruin it by making it the subject of 10,000 cheesy K overviews about the nature of reality.

Thanks,

The Management

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Judging Hypothetical

July 9th, 2010 Scott Phillips 66 comments

Team A is negative. They read a very complex and sophisticated kritik, that all comes from 1 author. Team B is affirmative, and in the 2AC they read 5 or 6 sort of stock K answers and then a card just tagged “Neg loses”, that goes on for about a minute.

In response to this card the neg says a lot of spin that sounds very good about why this piece of evidence is wrong and doesn’t understand what their K is about.

The 1AR goes only to this piece of evidence and says the following:
“Look, we have no idea what the neg is saying. However, we have a card that is soo good it will make you crap your pants. Not only is it directly responding to what they are saying, it specifically indicts their author and goes through point by point every argument in the 2NC overview and refutes it. I would explain the warrants, but quite frankly, I don’t get it. However, we debated this K at the last tournament and didn’t understand it then either. We spent a whole month researching answers and after reading 20+ books on the subject we found this amazing card. The neg may sound good, but ultimately every argument in the 2NC in response to this card is unevidenced, made up on the spot drivel from a high school student- it may sound good, but there is no real substance behind it. The purpose of the judge is to decide what arguments were the best- we have by far read the best arguments, in order to vote negative you have to decide that we should lose even though we made the best argument, simply because we didn’t understand it. This defeats the whole purpose of a research based activity and punishes us for spending time reading about the topic instead of about obscure philosophy”.

The 2NR Says (amongst other things) the following:

“Their evidence misses the boat- our K makes three key arguments, which are A, B, and C. This indict doesn’t respond to thee arguments because of …..” And then gives a long winded explanation.

Is this debate winnable for the aff at this point in your mind?

Assume the 2AR says more of the same the 1AR said.

You call for the neg cards and the 1 aff card. Upon reading the neg cards, you find that they do clearly make arguments A, B, and C and explain them well, just like the negative said.

Now you look at the aff card. You actually crap your pants. Never before in your life have you seen an on point response that is this good. The card clearly identifies A, B, and C as arguments made by the neg author, and then deconstructs them in such a devastating way that you would bet your life that they are not only false, but that the opposite is true. Assume the neg cards nor the aff card speaks to the “spin” placed on the evidence by the negative.

How do you vote and why?

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Keep Sending in K answers

July 8th, 2010 Scott Phillips 3 comments

The consolidated K answer project has gotten a lot of good responses with a few people in particular going above and beyond and contributing quite a bit.

But there is always more to do! Please email in any contribution you can- cards, cites, books/articles that look good.

Especially for the sort of stock K args that cross over to many different K’s like
-predictions fail
-value to life
-ontology/epistemology/methodology
-reps/language key
-serial policy failure/error replication
-defenses of empiricism and qualifications
-root cause
-terminal extinction impacts like modernity/rationality/technology/neoliberalism/militarism/biopower cause extinction

deathtothek@gmail.com

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Some more IR lectures

July 7th, 2010 Scott Phillips Comments off

I just did some youtube searches for authors that came up when researching the security K looking for vids. There are a million of them, I did some mild quality control in picking some of the ones I thought were better.

Read more…

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Anyone at a University Lib have access to this?

July 7th, 2010 Scott Phillips 1 comment

(update- found by bricker)

This looks like a pretty bad ass dissertation, and theoretically some schools should have access to it through their proquest dissertation subscription. If anyone at a university for the summer for camp can find it I would appreciate it.

or this

(found by bricker)

or
The heterarchical society: Explaining and understanding post-Cold War international relations
by Singh, Deepak, Ph.D., University of Miami, 1996 , 299 pages; AAT 9716714
or
Critical realism: An ethical approach to global politics
by Lee, Ming-Whey Christine, Ph.D., Duke University, 2009, 280 pages; AAT 3386694
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Viewing Computer Deal

July 6th, 2010 Scott Phillips Comments off
http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/36332/toshiba-satellite-l455s5000-laptop-intel-celeron-processor-900-cpu-2.2ghz,-3gb-ddr3,-250gb-hd,-15.6-hd-ws-lcd-(1366-x-768)

slickdeals.net

Toshiba Satellite L455-S5000 Laptop: Intel Celeron processor 900 CPU 2.2GHz, 3GB DDR3, 250GB HD, 15.6″ HD WS LCD (1366 x 768) $300
Hat tip- Sadagopal
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