Silbey,+Spenser

I debated at Meadows in Las Vegas, NV.

I'll keep this as quick as I can:

-Flowing is good, you should do it.

-I've been out of the game for a season and haven't done research on the surveillance topic. I'm confident that I'll still be able to follow your arguments, but I feel it's only fair to let you know.

-I value specificity and quality of evidence more than most people do. Having good cards and emphasizing them will help you win and increase your speaker points. Reading more than two lines of your good cards is also beneficial. Please, please, PLEASE compare your evidence. Most debates on key questions come down to card(s) vs. card(s), where each side has cool sources that say completely opposite things. If you want to win, your evidence should be better and you should know why. Note that this is not the same as "we postdate by 3 days, only we assume current political climate" or "our guy has a Ph.D." because those arguments are so far unwarranted.

-In fact, compare everything. Impact calc is worthless unless you discuss the importance of your impact relative to the other team's. Talking about why your framework is sweet is great, but not if you don't mention why it might subsume or turn the impacts to theirs. If this doesn't happen, I have to read all of your cards and do it myself. Give a good 2NR or 2AR and let me do less work.

-Bad theory arguments are probably not a good strategy. Good theory arguments are a fine strategy provided you spend substantial time and effort developing them. Use strong judgment to tell the good ones from the bad ones, please. I default to "reject the argument," but I can certainly be convinced that any coherent theory violation is a voting issue as long as your impacts are warranted. The problem with theory is that it's almost never actually warranted (on either side) and thus the potential for my decision to be difficult and strange increases when you go for theory--it'll likely come down to dropped arguments or meta-analysis. Tell me whether we're looking for in-round abuse or debating what debate should look like and why.

-Defense against disads and case is underutilized and persuasive to me. That's not to say that I'll be voting on 5 minutes of "no solvency" in the 2NR, but using strong defensive arguments to minimize the case or a DA on any level helps you out enormously. Basically, "there's always a risk of a link" is not persuasive in my mind, and I believe that impact calc is not a replacement for beating the disad/case.

-Alternative frameworks (discourse, methodology, epistemology, etc) are a go on either side. I am fairly well-versed in critical literature and will probably know what you're talking about. Again, specificity is important and affs that make smart answers to kritik links are in a good position. By the same token, if your neg strat is to cheat in stupid ways (floating PIC, avoiding engaging their refutation at all) you also have a very good chance of losing in front of me. I am, however, all for cheating in smart ways.

-I haven't judged many performance debates, but I have participated in them on both sides. I believe that you have to advocate something defensible, even if it isn't the topic, and I prefer substantive answers to pure framework arguments.

-Speed isn't an issue as long as you know how fast you can reasonably go; don't overreach because you'll probably sound bad.

-Paperless is good and to encourage it I will be pretty forgiving of computer issues, just don't exploit that to steal prep or I will devour your flash drives whole.

I love judging, please have fun and this will be fun for me too. Email me at ssilbey@gmail.com if you have other questions.