Progress

More progress has been made on this site, possibly to a point which I would characterize as "fully functional," if not entirely aesthetically coherent. I still need to figure out how to get the comment windows to popup rather than just linking to the individual archive page. As I am still actively performing maintenance on the site, all suggestions for improving its functionality or aesthetic quality are welcome.

On the note of progress, I should transcribe a brief record of my dealings in the past months since I last did any significant blogging. Mostly, I've been occupied with the routine nonsense like school, school-related things, and more school. A few things stand out in my mind from these recent events, however. You may recall that I was somewhat miffed and disappointed at the beginning of the speech and debate season because of my lower-than-expected performance. I seem to have reversed my failure in the most dramatic manner. I did open extemp at Tualatin and finished just about in the dead center of the pack. So, I got down to business, expanding the "ex-files" (my sobriquet for the extemp bin), writing a radio commentary, and working a little with our new debate coach (incredibly great). Finally the time came for the Clackamas tournament, and I was entered in extemp and radio. There were only 3 entrants in extemp, so it was cancelled. They therefore let me enter in impromptu at the last minute. I finaled in radio and took 1st in impromptu; a welcome change from my drought of success.

Then, last week was the Westview tournament. Because of the way the patterns and rounds laid out, Colin let me quadruple enter (he usually bars anyone from entering in more than 2 events): extemp, public debate (w/Colin Corbett), impromptu, and radio commentary all at the senior varsity level. The ratings tended in my favor as I placed 2nd in debate with Colin (going 4-1), 2nd in impromptu, 3rd in radio, and 3rd in extemp. I may have broken some kind school record at that tournament. We only sent 5 other people, and they all did very well. Jon placed 2nd in humorous interp, Colin placed 2nd in dramatic interp, Greg finaled in poetry, and Beth finaled in after-dinner speaking. Not too bad. I have to keep up over the break so we can win the Pacific University tournament when we return to school. We'll have the full team and should be able to make a major impact.

As for the debate results, our record for the season is 5-4, up from 1-3 after Sprague. There are not many things more satifying than debating and decisively defeating a good team, while seeing all of their mistakes and exploiting them to the fullest potential. In the final round of the tournament, the 1st place team was apparently already projected to be the winner, so we were debating for 2nd place. The resolution was "Resolved that: public schools have gone too far in banning religion" and we were the opposition. Thankfully, they defined the public schools to be those of America, not France (probably through ignorance of the legislation there). The beautiful part was that we were able to throw two Supreme Court rulings in their face (Wallace v. Jaffee and Lemon v. Kurtzman), use a handy bit of resolutional analysis to point out that they had no established threshold for what should be considered "too far," use their lack of a threshold to uncover a key contradiction, and destroy them. It's never fun to win in a landslide, but to win by successively beating down their contentions with contradictions out of their own mouths and using legal arguments is the nirvana of debate. I've decided that the Constitution and Supreme Court rulings are kind of like the heavy artillery of event, because most people have such an awful understanding of both, and they're difficult to argue anyway.

I have to go spray some stuff up my nose.