Elias,+Zack

Zack Elias  Bronx Science '06-'10  Dartmouth College '10-'14

I don't know anything about the topic, so make it clear what exactly you are talking about.

That being said, I am using my unique position as a judge to DECLARE WAR on bad arguments.

By "bad arguments," I mean stupid arguments. I don't care if you have evidence and I don't care how rhetorically powerful that evidence is. If the other team makes a compelling case for the stupidity of your argument, even if they don't have a card in the 2AC, I will vote for the smarter argument over the carded argument every time.

Additionally, by "bad arguments," I mean arguments that clearly only exist for cheating negative teams to win debates. The threshold for this is totally arbitrary, but I'll give you a hint. If your CP relies on immediacy or certainty to compete with the aff, your CP qualifies as a "bad argument." This is assuming, of course, that you don't have a good (and I mean GOOD) piece of evidence that proves your CP is actually related to the aff.

I am a reasonable person. I am willing to listen to any and all reasons you may have for why your argument is not a bad one. However, I will exercise my judge powers quite liberally to punish/reward practices that conform to a vision of debate that is worth pursuing.

__Specific Judge Notes/Biases__ Every judge is different, and every judge has their own opinions. Any judge that pretends that they don't conform their decisions around their personal biases and experiences is lying to you. I am at least going to be honest. Be aware that you can fight my biases with good, smart, logical arguments.

- Neg teams routinely get away with murder. Interpret this however you will. - The 1AR is not a constructive. If your argument wasn't in the 2AC or isn't explicitly responsive to a new block arg, I will let the neg get away with murder. - I think 2NCs that don't read any cards and just make smart arguments the whole time are totally badass. - Kritiks that are aff-specific are good. This means you are clearly telling me why the aff is awful, not spewing jargon-filled garbage that reminds me of my layup philosophy course on Derrida. (Hint: read the Security K, the greatest negative argument in debate) - Kritiks that are generic and are really just excuses to say nothing are bad arguments (see above). If you enjoy Lacan, Deleuze, Heidegger, Baudrillard, or other criticisms of a similar variety, prepare to receive block 26s. - Kritiks may or may not need alts. It depends. I have also voted on floating PICs in the past, but I could go either way. - "Logical policymaker" is a meaningless paradigm. I'm a college student in the back of a room judging a debate, not some dude in Congress or the White House. Pretending otherwise is silly. - "Zero risk" exists - Conditionality is probably bad. WARNING: I have inadvertently hacked out for conditionality bad in the past. You'll get extra speaker points for using the abbreviation "dish" instead of "condo" which doesn't make any sense and is totally stupid. - I love good cross-x. I will reward hilarious cross-x trolling with higher speaker points. If you are making your opponent angry in cross-x you are probably doing something right.