Thalheimer,+Meyer

I’m a new judge lastyear but a relatively old (as a high school debater can be… I debated my first tournament year on the alt energy topic and debated a little the year before that) debater. I have debated formally for 5 years for St. Mark’s School of Texas.

My displeasure about recent debates has caused me to add this important tip. This (hopefully) only applies to new debaters. Have offense. That means a reason why the plan is bad, not just why it isn't necessary. If you say global warming isn't real that is not a reason I should reject the plan. There is always a chance it might be real and the plan could be worth doing. However, if the affirmative makes global warming worse that is a reason the plan is actually a **bad** thing, not just an unnecessary thing. If you have any questions about this distinction please talk to me prior to the round- I would love to try to help you out with this.
 * CHEAT SHEET ||

** Meta level: ** I like the flow. This probably means I am tech-centric, but not exclusively. You can get by without doing extensive line-by-line and winning the meta-picture but I don’t recommend it.

- ** Familiarity with the topic ** I spent 7 weeks at the University of Michigan’s debate camp. I probably debated 40+ rounds there, so I have at least passing familiarity with most areas of the topic. I have debated over 40 rounds at varied sizes of tournaments against all types of affs and neg arguments. I have also spent a huge amount of time doing indepth case hits etc. so I know a lot about mainstream affs and most of the common negative literature. I have judged 3 or 4 tournaments, from brand new debaters to the late elims at a mid-sized novice tournament.

I am a 2N and have been for all of my debate career. I read the New Orleans aff at camp and went for a wide range of disads, counterplans, and kritiks. During the season I read a military infrastructure aff then the NIB aff.

At camp I read the ASATs aff then the ORS aff. During the season I read the ORS aff then the Satellite Dependency aff for the rest of the year. On the neg at camp I took the gender K in 90% of the 2NCs. It was in perhaps 80% of the 2NRs. Since the regular season started I have gone for the K three times in all my neg rounds. I love a good policy debate. Think of that what you will. Be warned: so far I have only dabbled in the soft-K literature (security/gender/psychoanalysis etc.). Expect either a lot of explaining or a confused judge if you love DnG and its brethren. Hint: a confused judge is not a judge inclined to sign the ballot for the neg (or aff if you go that way).
 * Last year stuff**

- ** Rate of Delivery ** I’m fine with speed, but speed does not mean incomprehensible mumbling. If you enunciate I should be able to flow. If you don’t, I’ll try to yell clear a couple of time and, if that fails, hope it clears itself out in future speeches. However, if calling clear does not substantially improve your clarity I’m probably willing to give the other team some leeway on mishandled cheap shots and new recharacterization of arguments. Final line: **you can do it if I can flow it. If I can flow it, you’re responsible for it.**

- ** Strategy Ranking ** (assuming ideal delivery and quality) Topic disad + case > politics disad + case > impact turn > generic topic qritiq > topic/aff specific T argument > PIC with internal NB > Process CP + politics

Note: If you have a case specific and well researched strategy, no matter what form it takes, I would rather see it than a generic. Notice the use of the words case specific. If your idea of a specific strategy is a nuclear war rhetoric link to Baudrillard or Ashtar, leave it at home please, for my sanity and yours. I will of course listen and try to evaluate the debate fairly regardless.

Note 2: Aff specific topicality means: a) a card proving they violate your interpretation, b) an actual abuse story. I like T subs on this topic as I think it serves as a core check against many of the squirrely affs, but that means defining substantial as an actual (preferably monetary) amount. Substantial does not mean without material qualifications etc. I am likely to give topicality more weight if the affirmative does not have an actual solvency advocate in the context of their plan, as this seems to prove predictability and limits abuse. I am not a fan of T Humans/Commerical.

Note 3: Advantage counterplans are sweet. Like seriously. It’s a key test of the necessity of the Aff’s internal link. Do we really need to ride on the backs of turtles or can we requisition some flying porpoises instead? Those questions are clearly important to ensuring ongoing hegemony.

- ** Cheap Shots ** Short and sweet- two scenarios

As a separate off case: drop it and you lose, amount needing to be said on it obviously varies with quality. Hitler wore pants, you wore pants, you are Hitler probably just needs you to go to the sheet and say “no.”

Snuck onto another flow in the middle of a card/block: not a voter, you are wasting speech time

Side Note: the stupider the argument is, the more likely I am willing to allow crazy cross applications to address it if somehow the other team forgets to address it on face. However, this requires realizing you dropped it and taking steps to remedy that. I won’t do the work for you and I would hate to vote on Mechanical Brain Spec.

- ** Framework **

Answering the K as the aff: best used as a way to leverage the aff against the kritik and to get ground back from abusive kritikal frameworks. Excluding the K altogether is probably bad, mitigating it is probably good.

Answering the K as the neg: An aff does not need to have policy advantages. A security advantage is not just cause to reach for your framework blocks. However, an aff does need to defend the implementation of a topical policy. Framework is not genocidal, you don’t defend the resolution you should lose.

As the neg for the K: I love framework that messes with the aff. However, the judge as an analyst leaves a lot of questions that you need to resolve for me (unless you want me to, which you probably don’t). What kind of analyst? Am I Mearsheimer or Tickner? Both will have drastically different views on how to decide the round. What does that mean? Under what circumstances can the aff win? If those kinds of questions aren’t answered by the negative I will probably give the aff more weight to their own framework arguments. I might decide I’m Karl Rove. That would be an unfortunate case of mistaken identity for both you and me. If you are K debater you probably don’t want that. On the other hand, I think the neg can win on the kritik even after losing the alternative if they win a methodology, epistemology, ontology first impact lense.

- ** Counterplan theory **

Conditionality- Condo is good; however multiple conditional advocacies are much harder to defend. 1 Condo is always OK (unless dropped or really, really mishandled), 1CP 1K is easily winnable but takes some effort, more than that needs a serious investment in its defense. Don’t say reject the argument unless you explain what that means in the context of counterplan theory. Note for the neg: employ creative bargaining. Example- condo justifies advocating a legitimate perm- solves your offense. This is especially good when there isn’t a legitimate perm . Consult- probably not legitimate unless you have aff specific advocates or the aff is really squirrely. I will be more sympathetic if the aff doesn’t link to any generics or is new.

Condition- much more legitimate than consult. All it **__needs__** is a solvency advocate. Then again, a chance of say no should be enough to win the debate for the affirmative.

Process- same as consult. Sketchy process like signing statements is even worse, but then again, I doubt you will find aff specific solvency.

Agent- not legitimate if competing off of ASPEC. Legitimate and germane if they speced their A.

PIC- with an advocate? Yes please! I love indepth PIC debates. Especially PICs that PIC out of a fundamental component of the affirmative and don’t just compete off of the aff’s bad plan writing.

Word Pic- no. Only against kritikal affs that defend the importance of discourse. Otherwise… stay away from these.

- ** Politics ** Uniqueness determines the possibility of the link. The direction of the link is obviously determined on the link debate. It is hard to 100% win the direction of uniqueness so the link is still very important. Internal link defense does a world of good. So do indicts of political capital theory.

- ** Impact Calculus ** I love it. I generally think magnitude > timeframe > probability. That is a gross oversimplification and obviously subject to change based on situations. If one of the three is extremely small or extremely large it obviously affects the other two. Probability is not just the probability of an impact but the probability of all the internal links leading to it. Timeframe is not just the timeframe of the scenario but the time it actually takes for the impact to occur. Classic example of this: WWII didn’t happen immediately after the global economy began to decline. Hitler had to grow his mustache, go to jail, rant angrily about things on Youtube, then take advantage of the radicalized population and incite WWII. It's hard being a fascist dictator.

Make liberal use of conflict deescalating impacts and explain how they can solve specific scenarios/compare them to your opponents conflict deescalting impacts. Just thinking about trying to evaluate a trade vs. heg impact debate with no further analysis terrifies me. Just kidding, I would probably intervene along the lines of my preference of the week and one of you would hate me forever.

I am unconvinced warming can cause extinction. That said, I’m fairly convinced it is bad. Large nuclear wars probably have unfortunate environmental effects that would be net worse than warming because of the sudden change and simultaneous lack of infrastructure that is necessary for coping, though absent asteroids I don’t think many things can actually cause true extinction. I am willing to play pretend for your sake though. I love you like that.

- ** Behavior **

Jokes: I am a sarcastic person, though I’ll try very hard to contain that when judging you. I appreciate sarcasm and wit in others. Good jokes = + speaks. Bad jokes won’t cost you speaks (different people have different ideas of humor), but offensive jokes will. Jokes in excess, good or bad, won’t lead to me consciously taking away speaker points, but I am sure my annoyance with you as a human being will be subconsciously factored in. There is a time where this is taken too far. I will try to intervene before it gets to that point, but making people cry is never acceptable.

Racist/Sexist Language: No. You will get a warning, and depending on the severity, a reduction in speaker points. After that the reductions get exponentially higher for each occurrence, to a minimum of 0 speaks. If it is particularly egregious I quite possibly will lower your speaker points immediately to the lowest allowable level. Profanity used sparingly will not cost you speaks unless wildly inappropriate. However, be forewarning, it does open you up to kritiks of language and it doesn’t make you look cool.

- ** Offense/Defense vs. Reasonability in topicality ** I like to think I judge offense/defense, but that is probably not true. Unless you explain, with warrants, why x% of fairness outweighs y% of education, my decision will probably be colored by my pre-conceived notions about the aff’s topical nature. I think strict offense-defense analysis on topicality is almost impossible but I think good work by either team can shift me much further away from reasonability than I would default. In other areas of debate I find offense/defense a good model of evaluation and generally true.

- ** Qualifications ** I think qualifications are uniquely important on this topic due to the huge number of hacks running around on blogs. Anyone could be pretending to be a Professor of Astro-Lycanthropology from the University of Transylvania- we wouldn’t want that would we? However, unless specific quals analysis is done in speech, it probably won’t have that large an effect on my decision. I can be persuaded by a warranted reject all unqualled authors arguments, however it is the burden of that team to define what a qualification means. Even if no analysis is made, if I call for cards my perception of your evidence is likely to be shaped by a) whether the qualification are easily readable and b) whether they are legitimate qualifications for the subject area.

- ** Paperless ** Prep stops when you stop prepping. Flash time doesn’t count. Don’t abuse this. If I catch you prep stealing you lose a minute of prep. If that takes you down below your minimum you lose it out of your next speech time. You don’t want that to happen.

- ** Speaker points ** I generally don’t give speaks below 27. Don’t make me hate you and it will probably stay like that. Conditioning the plan on all schools switching their cafeteria to only serving roasted babies and you would still get a 27+ (and a laugh). If you are blatantly racist etc., I can, will, and have given you, or failures like you, speaks that might (and hopefully will) make you cry. I try to do some scaling depending on the context of the tournament. That means that if you are a really, really good novice at a novice tournament you will get higher speaks than if you were debating in a varsity tournament.

- ** Other stuff ** I occasionally cut cards/read articles/do other things during prep. If you see me doing this, calm down, I promise I flow. Your whispered (or not so whispered) argument with your partner isn’t particularly interesting to me.