Forensic Debate Thread [READ OP BEFORE POSTING]

Lol. Well played.

My god. I am utterly drained from the mental stress of a late-afternoon debate tournament. My negative opponents were really good, and they had more contentions than normal so I couldn't attack them all. Thus, I need to manage my time better and organize my thoughts clearly. Anyone else been to a speech and debate/mock trial tournament recently?
If a contest on speech about the effects of literature on humankind counts, yes. Otherwise, I won a debate contest in English. Of course, the subject varied, depending on who picked. Mine usually involved either the Theory of General Relativity and the NFL. Besides those two, I'm a scrub.
I don't know if I can bring this into the topic without breaking boundaries, but does anyone live close by or roughly around Wall Street (Or just around at the time)? If so, were you able to witness the events in Wall Street?
I live 45 minutes from NYC, but I heard about the protests with the college students dressed as zombies. However I didn't see it. It was against corporate greed and stuff. Why though?
The unemployment or whatever has skyrocketed and various forces on and off the internet are not taking it anymore.
From the debate between my friends that I just flowed, one main thing came out from that: Always attack the Value Criterion first.

Looking back, I seriously recommend that people try out for their team or look up on how to debate in a forensics league. It's completely worth it, helps you in English with essays and provides many useful skills later on in life.
Hey guys, new resolution these next 2 months. A MAJOR point of this is 'need' in terms of aff or neg, the definition of need would completely turn a round. For affirmative and negative cases specifically, how would you define 'need'? Provide examples in a sentence with your definition of need as well please. Smile Want to see the WBO's opinion on this.
This is a serious necro, but I find this interesting. I'm on my school's debate team, and I like to think I'm pretty darn good. (33-17 in the last two years, and my partner and I got picked as the best team in our conference.) Once you get out of the lower levels of debate, they let you design your own arguments. Which made me happy, so I joined last year.

Anyway, I like the idea of debate as a "sport" of sorts. I participate in Policy Debate, and this year's Resolution is "The United States Federal Government should increase its economic engagement towards Mexico, Cuba, and Venezuela." (I created a plan about merging the US and Mexico. Not quite topical, but...)

I find myself more and more active in debate as I get further into the season. I judge middle school debates when I can (because it's got decent pay, and you get to help kids who don't always know what they're doing!) and I plan on debating in college. I got a 13,000 dollar scholarship for debate from the University of Kansas, and I'm waiting on Kansas State to respond to my e-mails to their coach.
Sounds awesome Temp.

I debate as well, but I kinda 'dropped' it due to lack of time/bad time management. Last time I joined a team tournament (as a Policy Debater) my team got to the semi-finals where we lost to bad judging (they picked the opposing team, even though they were arguing nonsense). As a LD Debater, I haven't had any formal tournaments, but I won my only 'actual' round at the camp I was at.
I've decided that I hate topicality arguments. I now have a giant pack of topicality answers because T is nothing but whining about how the affirmative isn't being fair, despite the fact that most colleges (and high schools) have their affirmatives open for the public to view. Plus, people tend to run about nine different disadvantages, too. Meaning they obviously has SOMETHING to research, but judges tend to look at these things in a vacuum. I don't understand fairness arguments when most leagues for high schools actually provide the entire first speech to the negative teams for fairness purposes a month in advance. (Rather, that's how most urban leagues go, IIRC.)

Anywhales, T. I hate it. I think it's whiny, and I don't like what it does to debate. "We didn't prepare, so they should lose. Also, we can drop everything else, because it's not fair. Even though we have three perfectly good arguments, we don't have to pursue any of it, because they make it impossible to devise arguments." That's what I hear when I hear "We'll be reading a topicality violation."

Though I do love theory (obviously). Asking to change the way a debate should be judged to draw away from those "debate-specific" arguments (like T and Agent Specification) to focus on the actual implications of the status quo is a pretty solid way to go. I've only lost that argument once.