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Re: topics and cold feet

>the option of "well, we don't like that word, so we've changed our mind"
>ticks me off and my guess is that it ticks off other folks too.  folks,
>there will be MANY things MUCH more serious in the next year or more
>which will require persons and programs to accept things they don't
>like, aren't used to, or are just annoyed by.

I agree. Please notice that if Korcok and I agree, something must be real.
I bet Mike also speaks for a lot of CEDA people who have been reading this
stuff. I am very annoyed. Yeah, I'm sitting here trying to complete a poll
of the topic committee and send it on to Greg Simerly for the mailing, so
hopefully within a few minutes I will know  what's up.  I voted to change
back to increase. However, the "we're going to take our ball and go home"
approach leaves me cold. But frankly, if all 22 NDT schools who have joined
CEDA  want to jump ship on a shared topic because they don't like one word,
then I say jump away. This is my reaction to an NDT-only topic.

Sometimes I just think that too much legalese blinds us to the dynamic,
tactile, and incomplete nature of language. Strickland is right, he has
found a way to be bi-directional on this topic, and the vast majority of
judges will vote for it. Yesterday I thought of two other ways to be
bi-directional on the aff.

To think that recent comments about the topics have anything to do with the
feelings of the debate community is silly. I can name less than 20 people
who do 90% of the talking, yet these people are going to make up less than
10% of the voting population even if they all vote and come from different
schools.

I understand that some of you like increase better than strengthen because
you think it is less bi-directional. An idea might make me want to change
things, but an NDT defection from our topic will not.

Secret Code for Tuna's Topic Rangers: "Big perfumed booty"


Alfred C. Snider AKA Tuna
Edwin W. Lawrence Professor of Forensics, University of Vermont
Mail: Box 54225, UVM, Burlington, VT 05405-4225
Phone: 802-656-0097, Fax: 802-656-4275
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Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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