Faltesek,+Daniel

Background: I was a high school debater in Minnesota in the 90s, and I debated for Concordia in the mid 00s and did some coaching on the college level after that. That might mean something to you, if it doesn't you now know that I like cold weather. It should also tell you that the bulk of my experience came before the computer era.

How I decide rounds -- no team wins every argument in a debate, I try to decide the debate in such a way that both sides get as much credit as possible. To this end it behooves you to think carefully about how your strategy and their strategy interact. I avoid reading evidence, the more evidence I read the worse it is for you. This means that you shouldn't tell me to read cards during your speeches. If the warrants you think you are gaining are that important you could explain them to me.

You can argue anything, but these things might help you understand how I think about Specific Issues

Topicality - T is a disad, impact level work is key. You need to win why your various ground claims matter versus theirs. I have voted in the past because the negative had a generic limits impact versus a specific ground impact flowing for the counter interpretation. I tend to think that the competing interpretations theory is a poor attempt at slight of hand to avoid the impact level debate. Also, if you are losing the uniqueness debate eg. if the topic is bidirectional, the threat that topic research might become bidirectional is not meaningful. On the link level, please be sure that we all know the violation in the 1NC, unless you are hiding T arguments in your CP shells, and if that is happening we must be back in 1998.

Intrinsic Disadvantages - yes. Politics Disadvantages - at your own risk, by this I mean that if the other team is smoother than you I will take their analysis over your cards from blogs. Your evidence in these debates should speak to facts (provide some warrants) rather than just say Clinton, Bush, or Obama w/5 political capital. If you want to run these arguments be creative and novel, consider executive branch internal politics, or congressional cloture disads or something that actually requires more than a robot to prepare. This also means that your politics key to education arguments on framework are the inverse of compelling, unless you came up with a really fascinating, rigorous, creative analysis.

Non-topical counterplans - do whatever you want. There might be some fiat abuse issues, but as long as there isn't object fiat your in the clear. Topical counterplans - see hypothesis testing. Generally, it doesn't matter. Actor Counterplans - yes. Agent Counterplans - mixed, if there is some propensity evidence for your use of fiat. This means that delegation or certain courts CPs make sense. States (Lopez/Morrison included) is not ok. The propensity standard used to be important to this whole negative fiat debate, the jury is still out on the negative fiat issue. Consult Counterplans - if left to my own devices I think these are bad for debate and also fail the propensity standard. Condition Counterplans - do you have evidence for this? Don't get me wrong, I like creativity, but these aren't creative. Multiple or 2NC counterplans - when I debated these were taboo. I guess times have changed, but I would be willing to vote aff in these situations without much pushing.

Critiques - yes, have specific links in the 1NC, have one coherent alternative for all your critiques. I have lots of ideas about these arguments, if you don't want to use my built in heuristics, you should tell me what you mean. Generic critiques are really, really boring. Framework - I remember when people debated critiques regularly without this morass. The aff won a lot, framework is a poor substitute for thinking, if you catch my drift. I can be clearer about this, it is highly unlikely that you will win that a certain set of arguments should be banned from the debate. Hypo-testing - There are two kinds of people in this world, those who know that the aff is a Hasty G and those that don't. Yes, I will vote on these arguments.

Have fun, try to learn something.