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Debate Competition: The Hub
Gosling
Looking Up Soccer In Mongolia Right Now, ProbablyWatertown, WIRegistered User regular
Looking Up Soccer In Mongolia Right Now, ProbablyWatertown, WIRegistered User regular
Okay, I'm gonna try this, see what happens. I'm gonna take a crack at actually completing one of these.
Here are the rules:
1. This will be a 16-man bracket, seeded randomly. If more than 16 sign up, you are all subject to my twisted whims. (I'll pick the 16, and will pull alternates from the rest as needed.)
2. This will be in the format of what I call a 'lottery debate'. I have put together a list of every debate topic I could think of, and reserve the right to add more topics to the list as I come up with them. For each matchup, I will select three at random. I will read off the topic, and then the two will debate it until I think things are running out of steam. I will not interact otherwise in any way. Then we'll repeat with topics 2 and 3. (I've tossed a small percentage of bogeys into the mix, so be careful. They're not anything silly like 'Twizzlers', but it could be something like 'Azerbaijan'.) Topics will not be repeated- if a first-round matchup draws Iraq, Iraq will not come up again in the entire competition.
3. The winner will be the person who is deemed to have won two out of three topics, as voted on by the PA forumers.
4. Matches will take place in, by popular demand, the forums.
5. Matches will take place whenever the hell I can get the three particulars on at the same time- me and the two debaters.
But we have no debate competition unless we have debaters, so if you're in, let's see some bold lime.
THE BRACKET
Oboro vs. Dread Pirate Arbuthnot
visiblehowl vs. Kilroy (active, debating organic food)
Wonder_Hippie vs. amateurhour
Feral vs. Loren Michael
Fencingsax vs. Randall_Flagg
saggio vs. Varcayn
jotate vs. moniker
Quid vs. Not Sarastro (active, debating minimum wage)
ALTERNATES
Plutocracy
clownfood
Dyscord
IloroKamou
Here are the rules:
1. This will be a 16-man bracket, seeded randomly. If more than 16 sign up, you are all subject to my twisted whims. (I'll pick the 16, and will pull alternates from the rest as needed.)
2. This will be in the format of what I call a 'lottery debate'. I have put together a list of every debate topic I could think of, and reserve the right to add more topics to the list as I come up with them. For each matchup, I will select three at random. I will read off the topic, and then the two will debate it until I think things are running out of steam. I will not interact otherwise in any way. Then we'll repeat with topics 2 and 3. (I've tossed a small percentage of bogeys into the mix, so be careful. They're not anything silly like 'Twizzlers', but it could be something like 'Azerbaijan'.) Topics will not be repeated- if a first-round matchup draws Iraq, Iraq will not come up again in the entire competition.
3. The winner will be the person who is deemed to have won two out of three topics, as voted on by the PA forumers.
4. Matches will take place in, by popular demand, the forums.
5. Matches will take place whenever the hell I can get the three particulars on at the same time- me and the two debaters.
But we have no debate competition unless we have debaters, so if you're in, let's see some bold lime.
THE BRACKET
Oboro vs. Dread Pirate Arbuthnot
visiblehowl vs. Kilroy (active, debating organic food)
Wonder_Hippie vs. amateurhour
Feral vs. Loren Michael
Fencingsax vs. Randall_Flagg
saggio vs. Varcayn
jotate vs. moniker
Quid vs. Not Sarastro (active, debating minimum wage)
ALTERNATES
Plutocracy
clownfood
Dyscord
IloroKamou
I have a new soccer blog The Minnow Tank. Reading it psychically kicks Sepp Blatter in the bean bag.
Gosling on
0
Posts
EDIT: And just so people are aware, the topic pool is skewed heavily to topics relevant to the United States.
Can non-participants suggest topics?
Round 1: Jobs
Round 2: Prisons
Round 3: National debt
I'm not going to go "Okay, Elki, you'll be against jobs." I just give a little stimulus, then the two sides figure each other out.
EDIT: Okay, fine, forums it is.
Then sign me up. I hate jobs.
what is the time limits/structure of these debates
And if it's a total beat-down, I'll give a fair shot to get your footing, but then I'm inclined to mercy-kill and move on.
Oh yeah, I wasn't thinking anything that small, I was just thinking, man, a 5,000 word post is just overkill, so I guess we are mostly agreed here.
Quality over quantity.
Fuck it, I'm in.
I'm going to get thrashed pretty soundly.
Christ, 150 words? I'm skeptical on what sort of quality is possible if the word limit is 200 words.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
My slight impression of Podly is that he's po-mo to a fault. Then again, he seems to be pretty much everything to a fault.
But I'm handicapped by my inability to access BBC, typepad, wikipedia, and a host of other informative sites.
I'd imagine the general answer is most of us dislike/disdain it, but it's a perfectly valid line of debate. I know I'd personally consider it a weak point in any argument and go after it, but that's not fundamentally different from any other school of thought.
God, China sucks sometimes. What happens if you go outside and start screaming "Tiananmen Square!" over and over again?
They're kind of a hands-off authoritarian government, most of the time.
I will inadvertently filibuster such lines of discussion with requests for clarification.
But I'm not sure how it will work with timezones - real-time replies might be a problem if they conflict, but a "within 12 hours" or such should be possible.
Meh, fuck it.
Strawman Jo is in.
I'll send $10 IRL to you, mtv, if you talk waterlogged into signing up and then have him support Hillary in the Hillary vs. Obama debate.
Time for my revenge
I will confess that I completely missed the Upcoming Games thread. Yes, I know it's on Page 1 and is 19 pages. I somehow managed to miss it. In the process, I seem to have leapfrogged the entire game list, including Richy's own debate competition which was sitting at #3 in line.
Richy has given his blessing, stating that he's been looking for time for his competition for over a year and doesn't know when he'll have time (his is 16 teams of two). We still need Elki's word to decide if this is still on or if I must hang my head in shame.
In the meantime, go ahead and continue sign-ups in case Elki signs off on this, just know what's been going on.