Palacios,+Josh

Things you are very unlikely to win in front of me: 1. Aspec. 2. T is bad. T is a reverse voting issue. We don’t have to be topical. 3. Competing interpretations as a T standard. I don’t need to see in round abuse, but I do need to see how the aff interpretation could be used to abuse you – not merely that it could be slightly better.

Anything else you can probably win, and, therefore, you should probably go for your regular strategy rather than over-adapt to me.

Some things I would like: 1. More comparisons of arguments/scenarios/impacts. I see a lot debaters that are very good at explaining their arguments, but not good at explaining the other sides and why one is better than the other. Be realistic. Don’t pretend your opponents arguments are worse than they are. Don’t use ridiculous exaggerations of your impacts. 2. A better explanation of how to evaluate rounds when I am asked to use alternative frameworks. I understand what I am generally asked to do in old school rounds; e.g. weigh risks of body counts. I don’t intuitively understand what you are asking me to do as a “critic of argument” or “debate activist”. This problem is even trickier when I am told that the alternative framework allows for the weighing of old school arguments as I often don’t know how to weigh a risk of the Mead card against the use of a patriarchal methodology. I am open to these arguments, but need some direction. 3. Question terminal impacts. Stopping one patriarchal practice almost certainly does not stop all patriarchal practices. Likewise while it possible that an act of nuclear terrorism sparks WW III and extinction, its also very likely that cooler heads in the major powers prevail and while there is some war its more like Afghanistan + Iraq than WW III. This doesn’t mean I don’t like big impacts, it just means I am more likely to see them as increasing the risk of the terminal impact by a percent or two than directly causing then end of days, and, therefore more grounded systemic impacts can trump them. Also most big impact scenarios have chain links that are more grounded that they should be leveraging as well. Stopping hundreds of thousands of instances of spouse abuse won’t end all patriarchy and bring us into utopia, but it would still be a wonderful thing. 4. Make more use of common sense. A lot of debate scenarios, I am looking at you politics, are almost transparently ridiculous. A lot of debate cards are awful, either outright unqualified or quasi qualified hacks. Pointing out these weaknesses and mocking them probably doesn’t get you to zero risk (although it can), but its very helpful and will boost your speaker points. 5. If you are going to go for theory (and you should occasionally, everyone’s reluctance to go for theory has let the neg get away with murder) it would be immensely helpful if you would not read your standard X bad blocks, but instead use those principles to come up with reasons why this specific tactic is bad and make 2/3 good arguments about that rather than 5/8 blips with about as much substance as “they steal our ground” * which is meaningless and question begging. On theory questions the burden of persuasion is on the team asking for the voting issue. 6. Extend cards by something more than author and year. I cannot flow unfamiliar names at top speed and thus am likely to loose you if that is all you are giving me. 7. You have to be civil to your opponents and your partner. If you are excessively rude to any of them, I will aggressively dock your points. 8. Performance. I think its clearly permissible, but rarely helpful. You can certainly make an argument via poetry, dance, theater, or whatever. The question is can you make that argument more effectively, especially in light of the tight time limits, than had you stated the argument plainly. I am rarely persuaded by arguments that your opponents should lose and/or have their arguments discounted for failing to engage in a similar performance. Also, I have to understand your performance, which I may not. 9. Critiques – I am mainly looking for good specific links. The more generic the link the more likely I am to let the aff wriggle away with a perm. Your links need not be cards, but you need to detail specific practices by the other team rather than assert that they operate in X mindset. 10. Paperless – yay I like this move, but you need to be ready to go at it. I think I give people about 30 seconds to a minute to return cards in paper debates before I take prep off. I will do the same for paperless, after that it counts toward prep time.