Unintended Hiatus

Apologies for the blog silence, but I must admit that since arriving back in the U.S. I have been enjoying a life of nearly constant work.

In the mornings and afternoons I am writing and researching, and making great progress. After lunch, I do a little planning for teaching, both the summer course I am assigned now and the two speech courses I have planned for the fall.

In the evenings I try to read or listen to something that has nothing to do with my day. Well it is supposed to be different, but it has much to do with my work. Tonight I am listening to old recordings of Allan Watts’ talks on Buddhism and spirituality.

I am trying something new with my public speaking classes mostly because I am dissatisfied with how they go. The best way to come up with new ideas is to go for spontaneity – but not a class on a whim. It means, at least for me, to go with the flow and be ready for speeches and student action that I might not be prepared for. To prepare for what you expect them to do is to not be prepared at all. So I have very loose speech assignments and very interesting but vague readings.

Tonight we had a look at Rashomon in order to understand audience perspective and how to structure arguments. I think it was a pretty good way of approaching argument models. Style will be interesting. I think we will listen to and watch some public intellectuals speak. Then we can move from that into reading some pieces on intellectualism and what that means. Do you see?

I find it a hard class to teach as most of the students are new not only to college but to the U.S. I wonder what they must think of me jumping around and filling the board with nonsense.

I hope you will forgive the hiatus, but there will be some good stuff coming. Allow me to just enjoy doing my work for now, and after I have fermented some ideas we can both enjoy that blogger buzz again.

Finally

Good to see a scientist using his own terministic vocabulary to respond to the pop “we are our brains” discourse flooding the world.

I hope this is the start of a turn in neuroscience that recognizes the fallacy of reductionism in beings as complicated as humans.

Final Round Video of East-West Tournament, Tokyo


Click To Play


Here is the final round from the East-West tournament in early June. We were invited to judge, but had some difficulty with the format. Here are some things to keep in mind as you watch the clip.

1. The clip begins with the entry of the 11 judge final round panel. Everyone stands up and applauds them, and as they come in they distribute copies of their judging philosophies to the debaters. This gives the debaters only a few minutes to make adaptations in strategy. There is a short moment of polling of the judges by the Negative team in Japanese, and the judges raised their hands to indicate their agreement with the statements.

2. Yes, the debate is in English! In Academic debate (what the Japanese call policy debate) the pronunciation of words has its own very difficult accent. The judges and the participants have developed their own pronunciation for English words over the years. They told me that we might have trouble understanding because the competition often favors “Japanese-English” – which is what they call this way of speaking. I have great difficulty understanding most of these speeches. I don’t think Academic Debate is very interested in teaching English speaking so much at this level, similar to how policy debate has little interest in teaching good public speaking skills in the U.S.

3. Topicality is a challenge to a debate over definitions. It has little to do with the plan. Academic debate is pretty lacking in theory debate. Everyone is a hypo tester, and the T argument challenges the Aff to a battle over interpretation of words. That’s why the second T violation sounds so strange – she basically reads definitions for half the resolution, so it’s multiple challenges in one. The Aff handles it pretty well in the 2AC by lumping it as a debate about the meaning of “Japanese Government.”

4. Counterplans claim mutual exclusivity, but what they really mean is resolutional competition. That is, you can’t endorse the resolution and the counterplan at the same time. More like a counterwarrant that has just crawled up on the beach from the primordial sea than a modern counterplan.

5. At the end is every policy debater’s dream – the chairperson asks “Is there any appeal from the Negative?” – After the 2AR the Negative is given one last opportunity to appeal to the judges, especially indicating new arguments in the 2AR. Amazing. Rarely do Negative teams invoke this opportunity, I was told.

6. I love the fact that they have people coloring in boxes of chalk on the board to indicate prep time use! Gives it a very game-show feel don’t you think?

2009 U.S. Japan Debate Exchange versus Sophia University


Click To Play

The processing of videos is slower than I thought it would be, sorry for the slowness. This is a good debate to start with though. The last debate on the final day of the tour versus Sophia University was a huge suprise. First, it was in an intimate, private setting with only 5 observers, all of whom participate in the Japanese policy format they call “Academic Debate.” Secondly, it was the most American styled policy debate that happened on the tour. This was very surprising to me as the debate seemed very familiar. Finally, this debate really highlights some of the differences in Japanese “academic debate” and U.S. “policy debate.” The major difference is that academic debate accepts hypothesis testing as the only way to make a decision in a round. This becomes a nice moment of cultural communication between the teams over the counterplan in this round.

The topic was That the Japanese Government should encourage companies to introduce equal pay for equal work.

Returning to my Normal life

I think I am fully recovered from what little jet lag I had. I only became very sleepy at 4:30PM yesterday so I went to the grocery store to shop and to hopefully avoid the inevitable nap. Today I am feeling good, up since 6:30 piddling around the house. Right now the requisite transfer of MiniDV tapes to the computer is in full swing. I expect I should have, at best 2 videos of the Debate Tour up tonight, at worst, one.

Meanwhile I have put all of my photos up on webshots. Most of them are of food, but I think there are some pretty good shots in there. When I have a few minutes I try to tag and sort them, but that’s going to take some time to completely finish.

I also have some smaller video clips I am putting up on YouTube and Facebook from my digital HD camera, which works well for small clips of experiences rather than longer films such as debates. The MiniDV is pretty unsurpassed for capturing full debates. My Flip Camera has completely died, even after sending to the manufacturer, it still fails to work. I have given up on it but might be inspired to mail it off to them again this week.

Well in other news, I have been thinking about WUDC and the crazy registration process. It was easy for me as I was in Tokyo, with high bandwidth and it was 3 in the afternoon.

WUDC registration ended in 90 seconds! This was totally not suprising, but does point out some of the problems with a first come first serve system. I don’t know why they don’t just give a rotating number of slots to people. So round one, everyone gets 1 team 1 judge. Round 2 opens, and you get the same if you want, but only if you are in the first round. Round 3, the same, and after that take an assessment of representation and give the remaining slots to those waitlisted. Voila! A fair tournament registration system.

It’s just going to get worse as the popularity of Worlds continues to increase. Imagine what it will be like in 5 more years as the midwestern U.S. schools start to become involved. I know from my recent trip that Worlds style parliamentary debate is gaining steam in Japan as well. What happens when the U.S. and China are fully engaged in wanting to attend Worlds? I don’t think a venue could be found to host 500 teams, so there will just have to be concessions made in the registration process. It just might not be possible to allow traditionally strong Worlds universities to admit 5 teams anymore. But this is good if one supports diversity of participants. I think this debate will be interesting to track if it comes up at Council or on the internet.