Wallace,+Brett

George Mason University
First, make the debate fun to watch. I recommend doing this in the following ways. Have ethos, be friendly, be funny, be smart, be confident, be creative, or make fun of your opponents if you want.

Second, I have biases, I'm not gonna lie. So there are no suprises, here they are.

-I have a much higher intellectual standard for what constitutes a persuasive argument than you may think. I ran plenty of arguments when I was debating which I think are quite stupid and I feel dirty for it. That being said, stupid arguments in which you very much out tech a team and or they drop arguments, I will clearly vote for in a second. But when it comes to me enjoying the debate, giving good speaker points ect. I dont particularly enjoy stupid arguments. This includes arguments such as, nuclear malthus, wipeout, impact turns to topicality, kritiks that cheat a whole lot (more on that in a second), consultation counterplans, arbitrary procedurals. Possibly some others.

-Topicality, competing interpretations are good. Although reasonability is smart to go for on the aff if you can't get offense, you need OFFENSIVE reasons why reasonability is good (which is why reasonability is stupid because the logic is circular, you can't prove you're REASONABLY reasonable). Arguments why the neg's/aff's definition are predictable and or arbitrary or not are smart arguments that are offten ignored. make IMPACTS as to why limits matter and ground matter. I will shoot you if you say CI only our case is topical.

-Disads-I like them alot, especially the politics disad. I always think there is a risk of them if you dont atleast PHRASE your arguments offensively. Some of them are stupid though, and thus I really enjoy hearing smart, persuasive 2ars that do things like go all in on your disad is dumb and there is no internal link because x,y,z is how the real world operates, and your disad presumes a, b, c.

-Counterplans- Alternate actor counterplans are suspect, the debate hinges upon whether they are logical and or fair or not. Conditionality is the same way, to win its good you should probably win it is logical, to win its bad you should win that its unfair. Please weigh the impacts of which standards are more important. Texual compition is also good, it is very good. Against permutations make the argument to permute: do the counterplan. Negatives have to win that functional competition is good and that the perm atually severs something that is important. Uniqueness counterplans are smart, very smart, you should run them.

-Kritiks - most kritiks cheat, for the reason that alternate actor counterplans are bad (not an opportunity cost with the affirmative). However a teched out 2nc on why their framework is good for debate and why the aff's theory argument links to their K can put up a good defense. I am however very persuaded by the shively evidence, convincing me otherwise that framework doesnt outweigh might be difficult. Framework is probably a voting issue, but that needs to be discussed. If you MUST cheat (run a K) and dont want me to think that your kritik is stupid, then you have to do a good job of extending CASE arguments that prove the aff can't solve their harms and tie that into how the affirmative's assumptions are thus flawed and make inacurate predictions about the world and thus only the alt of changing our views of the world can solve. If you don't want to go for framework, then please impact turn. The war on terror and heg are good.

I will probably interject during cross-exs sometimes, not to the extent that Dallas does though.

Oh and Steve D'amico put this in his judge philosophy...

"No one should ever read the Strait and Wallace evidence in front of me, unless they want to recieve a 25"

To that I will just say, that if you are preffing D'amico in the first place. Well, then you've got bigger problems to worry about.