The New York Sophist

Moving is one of these things that is so disruptive it’s hard to consider it as anything other than disruption itself. There is no way – at least for me – to put things where they go since there is no where they go when you are in a new spot. Luckily I have a new roommate who is excellent at organziational skill, planning, and vision, and has made this place pretty suitable so far.

Still trying to figure out where to work. Uncharacteristically, I type this on my PC at my desk – not where the blog muse used to live (perhaps the muse has moved simultaneously?). Traditionally, I write blog entries on my chromebook at the kitchen table, or on the couch while watching the local morning news and weather. Now that is a historical location for invention that doesn’t seem to have been packed or perhaps was damaged during transit.

Moving Day, May 2021 (My photo)

There’s nothing like the auspicious, creepy, odd feeling of standing in your old apartment, free of all your things that made it yours, wondering about it. Same feeling in a new place as your boxes are coming in slowly. What is this space? That feeling is a rare one so I like to stand around and feel it, just to be able to remember.

The biggest thing about this old apartment is how much it creaks when there’s no furniture in there. I guess perhaps we could say that the weight of hundreds of books took a toll on the floor. I will erase this line if I learn that my old landlord reads my blog.

The new place is coming together and feeling good, but the most difficult thing to move in is practices. This is my attempt at starting up the weekly blogging practice once again, something I really love and enjoy but is so hard to make space for in the day. Why is that? Why are practices so hard to pack up and move?

In this latest episode, I chat with the co-founders of the Canonical Debate Lab about their project to establish a way to collect, store, and provide arguments to the world to improve decision making.

I’m joined by Timothy High and Bentley Davis to talk about how computers, coding, and the internet can hopefully improve the art of argumentation and debate for all of us. See what you think!

Dr. Lee Pierce, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric at SUNY Geneseo joins Dr. Dan the Renaissance Man and Steve for a discussion on the relationship of post-structuralism to rhetoric, graduate school pedagogy, and whether or not it matters if you have read everything Derrida ever wrote.

Have a listen here!

My presentation on a panel on tournament debate pedagogy at Southern States Communication Conference, April 2021

The history of American intercollegiate debate practice is mostly the tracking of metaphors. Debate instructors and debate practice has always been connected to some metaphor that communicates the value and importance of debate as an educational practice.

Since the mid 20th century, that metaphor has only been “fair competition” and further reduced to “fair tournament competition” which governs nearly every decision made in the teaching and learning of debate.

This metaphor I of course find revolting, although there is a defense of it. Tabling that, it could probably be agreed that the presence of new and better metaphors for debate instruction and practice benefits everyone who teaches and practices debate. The more and varied ways to understand what we are doing, the more and varied ways we have to innovate, try new things, and engage in visionary practices that could benefit us.

In this paper I argue that the competitive cooking show is a great metaphor for competitive debate pedagogy. I look at three shows in this short talk and discuss how and why I think they would be good metaphors. See what you think of the talk, and later on in the week (or next week) I’ll post the full paper.

Photo by Kajetan Sumila on Unsplash

I was asked by the people at Power of Public Speaking if I would like to be a guest host on their POPs Community podcast. In thinking about what to talk about for 45 minutes or so, I thought a great topic would be why we are obligated to allow students to speak about very real, very immediate controversies in the world.

Here’s the podcast. I think it went really well and I had a great time. Makes me think I should do some solo In the Bin episodes once in a while. Might be a good way to mix up the modality of shared ideas.

As always let me know your thoughts, questions, comments, and of course opposition to my ideas in the comments here or over in the POPs Community. Would love to hear what you have to say.