Lord,+Maximilian

My name is, obviously, Max Lord. 3 years experience Boise High School, plus a bachelor's in history from UC Berkeley. Two years of fairly extensive judging since that.

I deeply appreciate impact calculus or some sort of explicit voters in the last rebuttals, since I don't think I should be responsible for making arguments for you.

I have an ambivalent opinion about critical arguments, but if you can articulate them well go for them by all means. I'm most familiar with Foucault and the general gist of Marxist and post-colonial criticism. For some of the other stuff like psychoanalysis I don't follow the literature very closely so don't expect me to have a deep understanding of the jargon without some serious explanation. If I can't understand what you're saying then you're going to have problems in my eyes.

I'm a big fan of policy oriented arguments (again, I'm totally happy with kritiks if they're run well, they're just usually run poorly) and I can't think of any policy-oriented arguments that I automatically drop. I'm agnostic on the theoretical legitimacy of different counter-plans or perms, and generally prefer a competing-interpretations framework for theory. That also applies to kritiks.

Procedural arguments are fine, but if you want me to flow something word for word then you need to slow down enough so that I can actually flow everything. If you couldn't flow it verbatim chances are I can't either. I have deep reservations about reverse voting issues on topicality (I won't punish them automatically, I'm just not a big fan) and some of the more asinine definitions like "and/or means both" or "and/or means one or the other" since both of those definitions flie in the face of grammar and basic logic. Those are an inclusive but not exclusive set of examples since the list of terrible definitions is probably infinite for all intents and purposes. Common sense should let you know if a definition is terrible or not.

Speed is fine, but if you want me to flow something in its entirety you have to give me the time to do so. If you're going to fast or insufficiently clearly I will yell "clearer" or "slower" depending on the problem. Repeated infractions will see me stop trying to flow for the remainder of the speech unless an offender takes the hint.

I try to stay reasonably well informed about what's going on in the world, so blatantly false assertions about politics or economics will earn you a glare, unless your opponents make an issue out of it in which case you could have problems. You should also try to avoid making huge errors regarding basic science, since the humor value of people not understanding what an orbit is has long since faded.

Try not to get snarly with each other if that can be avoided. Mostly I see myself as acting as the most neutral judge possible (while acknowledging assorted personal biases) who can try to render an objective verdict.

You should also have fun. If you have any questions about a decision/comment that I've made in a round, I'm happy to answer questions as boisemax@gmail.com.