What the title said. It's at Maplewood library at 7:00. You should all come.
Hmm. Well, yesterday I didn't go to debate since Andy had a cold, and I didn't want to go, so it was cool. But today I went to soccer tryouts with a semicold, and it was not cool. Other than that I've just been keeping busy. PSAT on Wednesday, I'm not very worried after a few practice test, it seems rather easy.
Tomorrow is my first debate tournament of the year, same it's classic. I really should be getting some sleep seeing as how I need to get up early for it tomorrow, but I have a really huge energy rush, due to the fact that I just completed two homework assignments in forty minutes, just an hour away from the deadline. Anyways, I hope to do really well tomorrow, because I'm angling for a position as team captain, seeing as how no one else is there to compete with me for that position. Both of our cases are pretty kickawesome, so it should be okay. Our neg case in particular is great, since it invalidates most of what they say, regardless of how they say it.
I scored a 85 on the UMTYMP test. Except for one spot where I screwed up an integral on a arclength I didn't make any major mistakes, so I'm pretty pleased with myself. The thing I'm more pleased about s the fact that I'm actually off to a better start this year than last year, and last year I only had six classes. Signs of progress...
Debate tournament on Saturday. The fact that Andy is my partner is possibly the only thing that makes the activity bearable, as almost every practice is during my classes and classic debate sucks and yadda yadda. Anyways, I need to finish up our cases. They are both extremely over the top, and I hope to win off of weighing issues alone. Our impacts are along the lines of America descending into totalitarianism and America's economy imploding.
I've been pretty busy lately. Today I took a physics test and went to a debate practice. I'm a bit worried about debate. Some weird rules about what teams I can be on and what not might prevent me from debating again. I hate bureaucracies. (in a totally unrelated side note, I noticed that Firefox's spell checker was really terrible at certain words. I might be switching to Epiphany, as it's more light weight anyhow.) Our new resolution is the death penalty, which is interesting because I'm still largely undecided on the issue.
*IMPORTANT*
Come to the chapter meeting this Monday at the new Maplewood Library in Ramsey county and die. I mean, or die. Seriously, I haven't seen all of you in a long time. Then again, I'll see many of you tomorrow.
On a sadder note, I'm pretty sure I failed the physics test. The occurrence of this event I will blame on several factors. A false sense of security brought on by an easy practice test which lead to my not studying, a crying baby in the testing site, and a faulty equation sheet. Or I just should have studied more. The baby was cute, however, so I forgive it.
Argh, my school year is starting up again soon, and I've only made minimal progress on the game project. I've revised the goal, so that it will once again be more practical, but it's still huge. Great... I'll be posting some additional information later.
POTD
Kratos is supreme!
Time for the gigantic mega post! I’ll have to categorize this one…
Debate:
Wee, four hour mini bus trip. Pretty uneventful actually. So whatever, I’ll skip ahead.
So, the resolution is: “Resolved: The actions of corporations ought to be held to the same moral standards as the actions of individuals.”
Some quick background before we begin:
Common Aff arguments: Lots of harms when we hold corporations differently. These include: letting the individuals within the corporation hide wrong doing, excessive corporate power, disregard for human welfare, and similar things. Really, most aff cases are the same, they almost all state that by holding the corporations the same way we get a benefit.
My aff case: In my frame work I establish that morality is only useful when applied to humans, I.E. that morality only matters if it is helping alleviate human suffering. Thus I set up the value of morality and the criterion of decreasing exploitation. In the framework I set it up so that showing a decrease in human suffering (exploitation, this is explained in case) is enough to affirm. And then I basically lay out the ways in which exploitation is decreased.
Common Neg arguments: For neg there is slightly more flexibility. Some people set up cases similar to the aff cases, that is, they try and show that negating has comparative benefits. On the other hand some neg cases try and prove the resolution necessarily false based on universal principles. Arguments of this sort consist of: morality doesn’t exist, the corporations aren’t morally culpable, there are morally relevant differences, etc.
My neg case: It’s just a pretty standard culpability case saying that a corporation is like a thought concept, so it can’t be morally culpable for its actions. The same way Nazis, and not Nazism is responsible for the holocaust, corporate actors and not the corporations are responsible for whatever action.
Round 1: I was neg. This was against some random opponent. I really thought I won this round, because quite frankly his case was terrible. “Since corporations won’t be held to these responsibilities they will turn into utilitarians.” Umm, okay… No warrant, and I that “harm” is pretty silly. But apparently I lost the value-criterion debate, so he got all of his impacts and thus won.
Round 2: I was Aff. This round was annoying as hell… My opponent made really bad arguments, and terrible responses to my arguments, but I dropped her third contention and her freaking underview. And she was on the neg! All that offense she had made it nearly impossible to cover with the limited time in the 1AR. The most annoying thing was the judge said he really wanted to vote for me, but couldn’t just because of that stupid spread. Ah well.
Round 3: I was Neg. Whatever. Her case was overall just pretty strong, and she was a good debater. I felt like I should have lost that round. But I got 30 speaker points, and my judge said it was one of the smoothest deliveries she had ever heard.
Round 4: Aff again here. The two of use were both running benefit cases, but I had the kid’s case and I outweighed his benefits. A pretty easy round. 29 speaks ^^.
Round 5: Neg here. I adapted to my judge really well, the kid dropped my neg case, I kill his value criterion, it was just a pretty good face crush.
Round 6: Aff… I debated a kid (actually I stayed at his house, and he plays Magic, and he’s an overall cool kid) who set out to have fun at this tournament, so he ran… reptilian illuminati. The case stated that we are all being mind controlled by an evolved species of raptors, the illuminati, and that the only way to free ourselves is through the access of the right side of our brain. All of his cards came from David Ick, founder of the Green Party in England (this is why the Green Party will never win an election.) The case wasn’t actually horrible (if the judge decides to go with debate instincts over common sense that is) because against any response I made he could claim that I was brainwashed by the illuminati, so my argument is just an attempt to cover up their presence. However I responded by drawing a caricature of a illuminati, thus accessing the right side of my brain and disproving the presence of the illuminati. I also said that if the judge would buy my opponent’s argument he would also have to buy my argument my opponent was actually brainwashed by the Lupines, an evolved race of lycanthropes. And he dropped my case, so it was an easy win. I had also contemplated reading a poem to access the right side of my brain, and I spent a lot of prep time trying to write a rhyme. Nothing rhymes with illuminati that I could think of. Anyways, in response to my drawing he said I had drawn it with the left side of my brain, since I did it utterly without emotion or conviction. So during my next speech I acted like I was very upset by that, and I channeled my pure emotion into a second drawing, thus accessing my right side. Then the judge gave me 25 speaker points. If he had given me just a few more I could have gotten a speaker award. What a meanie. Maybe if my drawing was better? But man, I deserved more points for coming up with such a novel response.
Anywho, my final record was 3-3, and no one on my team did much better.
WARNING: Politically Correct stuff galore below!
I found it singularly hilarious that the Lynbrook team had a single white kid. And maybe three guys. I was also quite disappointed that I didn’t get to debate any of them, since I told Aaron I would beat some for him. But my record was too sucky to debate them. And another thing I observed, this will sound weird, but Indian girls should shave! And I mean their faces. I can’t tell you how disconcerting a moustache is on a girl. But that is pretty unrelated to anything else. Besides that the Lynbrook team was full of attractive Asian girls that I didn’t have a chance with… <_< Also, apparently Hopkins has a reputation, because the Lynbrook coach said we were one of the teams to watch out for.
After the first day we went to our home-stay. And stayed up till one telling messed up stories. And the second we watched Blazing Saddles and then went to sleep. Hmm. We also went to a really good Italian restaurant called Mondo’s. It was the first real meal I had had in some time, so I was made mucho happy.
So in summary: I think I could have done a lot better if I had put more work into debate, but I didn’t have the time to commit. I’m still deciding whether or not I’ll be doing debate next year.
Music: Yay! Music!
So I’m probably neglecting to talk about a lot of new bands I got, but I didn’t get those CDs as recently, so I just won’t talk about them
X&Y and Rush Of Blood To The Head, by Coldplay: Well, Coldplay, is one of those bands that I really want to like, but I somehow can’t. The singing is overall subpar, ugh, I can’t even hear him half the time. And the instrumentation although cool, if the same in every song! I’m serious, all their songs sound exactly the same. Not cool. Except for a couple stand out tracks I was very disappointed by Coldplay. I’m not sure what they are aiming for, but they sound like a combination of The Frey and Death Cab for Cutie, and the result isn’t too great.
Franz Fredinand, by Franz Fredinand: This album, was very cool. The guitar playing is cool as heck, and the songs are fun. Yeah, not much else to say, but I like it a lot. Especially Take Me Out, which is a cool song.
And I have a hard calc test coming up, in addition to the AIME on the same day.
Sorry for the long post...
POTD
Except for the fact that that that picture (oh yes, I used three "that"s in a row) has an impossible structure it's really cool. The background is very nice.
So I had a lot going on, as you can probably imagine. I just fixed the desktop computer, which was broken over the weekend while I was gone at debate. I don't have time to write a good summary tonight, because I'm going to bed soon, and I'm distracted to boot. But never fear, tomorrow you will get a giant report on the debate tournament, and my thoughts on debate as a whole. Short story: I think the tournament went pretty well. I was a little thrown off by the tougher competition at first (especially those silly spreads), so I began 0-3, than made a comeback and ended 3-3. And I was disappointed by the finals and stuff, because the novices really weren't that good. I felt that I could have done better than them in the same positions, something I never feel watching varsity rounds. Ah well.
POTD
That has some very good lighting going on there. The one thing I love about old cathedrals like that is the light.
AIME is happening soon. And I'm only somewhat prepared for it, although I have a feeling I'm more prepared for it than some of my UMTYMP classmates. But then there are people taking it outside of UMTYMP... And I have an UMTYMP test coming up soon. And I have Novice Nationals. And I need to take my physics test. When it rains it pours. Actually my life just happens to always become extremely stressful.
POTD
Ooh, that is one of the coolest concepts ever. Wow.
Well, not too much exciting going on, but there is stuff going on. I just took my third physics test, which was okay. And I'm about to turn in two UMTMYP assignments. And I'm about to finish a philosophy paper, again. And I'm about to write a new debate case for novice nationals.
Most exciting is I'm getting my braces off tomorrow. Woohoo! If I start wearing more normal t-shirts I might actually pass off as a normal person...
POTD
For those of you who enjoyed bodyworks. I have to say I admire the amount of work that undoubtedly went into that piece.
Argh, haircut and braces getting tightened. Could any combination of two events be worse?
I finished my ten page history assignment, huzzah! Actually that wasn't huzzah worthy, because I actually had to work my butt of in order to do it. Any sign of effort on my part is de facto not cool.
Some quacky British professor said today (Jan 22) is the most depressing day of the year, for various reasons I didn't care about. However it didn't sound like he was depressed, since he was happily using NPR to market whatever crap he is selling. And you know what? I'm inclined to agree with him. Guess why. It's because math league was today. Man, I had such a good time talking to myself, you know I really hate people. It was great, just me sitting alone, without even a measly book to read. Really, it was awesome, you shouldn't have been there. What the crap, seriously I give up. Next year I'm joining a team. Some team like Wayzata, Edina, or Eden Prairie. Imagine that, I could actually be on a team that held practices, and actually had a competitive shot at doing something. And actually had enthusiasm. And actually tried to improve itself through practice. And actually showed some motivation. Man, that would be the day.
Anyways as a quick wrap up of today's meet:
Event A was easy so I picked up full points
Event C was graded by dumb buttfricking school teachers that don't know algebra, so they didn't know n(n+1) = n^2 + n, so they graded my paper wrong, so they screwed my score, so they screwed my chances of going to state, so they forced me to have to do well on the AMC 12 or I won't qualify for ARML. I can't believe people pay taxes to give such silly people jobs.
I guess I promised a debate post, so here goes:
The journey: Well the ride on the Retard Racer (R) was about as crazy as I thought it would be. Which was very. I divided my team between reading The Silmarillion, creating a debate fight club, and working on various debate related things.
Day 1: The novices weren't actually competing the first day, so I watched a lot of round. One of my teammates did a round in 7 minutes, and won. It was a silly round though, a top ranked debater against some noobsy Nebraska debater that couldn't flow. To quote my teammate "Extend my burden analysis, I meet the burden. You affirm here."
Day 2:
Round 1: I lost off some crappy solvency argue. "He doesn't show that holding corporations to moral standards that respect human beings decreases exploitation." Hmm, that's sort of what my case was doing.
Round 2: This girl sucked. She said "ZOMG CORPORATIONS BREAK LAWS THEIR IMMORAL OH NOES." I said "Law isn't moral, look at the Nazis." Win for me!
Round 3: This round was just mentally retarded. The judge basically constructed new arguments for my opponent, extended his offense, and did all kinds of things to help him out.
Round 4: This was a funny round. My opponent ran a case saying that we should define corporation using the slang definition, which calls it a fat stomach. Unfortunately that played right into my case, which argues that corporations and individuals make decisions in different manners. My entire argument was "Stomachs and People make decisions differently, so you can't hold them to the same moral standard." I loled.
And also I'll do a quick report on music.
Moby: Don't like this guy to much, not great tunes, don't like his vocals much
Stereolab: This band has to be French, because I can never understand a word they are singing, and they have song titles like "Le Demure" and "Cosmic Country Noir." Actually, some of their songs are in English. But whatever, I love them. They have such addicting melodies and stuff, and I don't actually mind the French either.
Daft Punk: These guys are freaking insane, and I like this. Nothing like weird synthesizer voices saying "I am the brainwasher."
The Gorillaz: Andy doesn't like them, but I don't think they are too bad. You really have to watch their music videos to appreciate them.
Hybrid: I like them. Except for when the guy sings, the vocals are annoying.
And I found a book worse than Eldest! Dragons: Lexicon Triumvate. The author likes to go around on forums trying to promote his book by saying "If you love Harry Potter you'll love..." on Mugglenet, and then saying "If you hate Harry Potter you'll love" on some anti-potter site. So anyways he stumbled onto Anti-Shurtugal and wrote "If you hate Eragon you'll love...", after going on Shurtugal.net and writing "If you love Eragon you'll love..." Funny things is the ASers pretty much took his entire terrible book apart. (It's about cyber-dragons fighting in a medieval setting. Yeah.) And then they proceeded to tear him apart. It turns out he is a sexist, and a racist against all that are not Asian.
And I also went to Alanaxh's house this weekend for supper. The food was excellent. However it would seem that I'm unable to make conversation, because there was _waay_ too much awkward silence. And we also watched a Marx Brothers film, which was funny as too be expected. And I did some trading of Magic cards; couldn't get Ben to give up his Umezawa's Jitte, unfortunately. And that will conclude our much too long post.
POTD
Cool piece, there are a number of little things I don't like, but it's well done. The hair I like especially.
Hmm... so there are a number of things going on.
I'll have to do my long debate post later, because it will be really long. But just quickly, we had seven people go into octo-finals. I was .500 myself, but I place the blame later. :P
I've got a 5 page, and a 10 page paper due tomorrow. So today is my big cruddy day!
And I got a lot of new CD's by: Daft Punk, Moby, Gorillaz, Hybrid, and a bunch of other stuff. I haven't listened to them yet, so not sure how they are. Daft Punk however, I like already.
POTD
Would have been cool except for the gothic/emo fairy wtf.
Hurm, back from another Lonely Math Meet ®. It looks like I'm up in the running for highest scorer on the team, again. What a prestigious award considering the many layers of tough competition I had to go through in order to win that. >.< *asplodes* The Canterbury division sucks so bad! As an individual I'm only tied for last place. If I had two clones of myself our team would be in first place, *TWO*!
I've also got a debate tournament in Omaha next week, which I'm excited for, because long trips with a debate team have a tendency to get INTENSE. But is also means I have much case writing to do.
Cool details on this. Interesting concept for a dragon also.
Went to two parties last night, sweet. The debate party was mostly us sitting around and talking about anything other than debate, since no one wanted to be reminded that school was starting again. And we watched a movie made by my teammate's euro class called FranceFranceRevolution. ^^ The math party was us talking about football (appearantly all this time math geeks have been ravid football fans I jus haven't known), watching the Cowboys vs. Seahawks game, and playing a large assortment of card games where everyone would be trying to calculate the probability of winning next turn. ^^ Math nerds are funny. And now I have to reenter the real world, where I have to write an article for my student newspaper. :(
And just a reminder, Mathcounts is coming up soon, and we still need a single (1) team member. Remember all you are giving up is about two (2) hours of your life on a Saturday mourning if you decide to participate. Think about, not that much of a commitment, and you'll see friends there. And if you decide you want to practice for it, then I can get you materials, and other stuff so that you an get ready, you just have to show an interest. If you spend maybe fifteen (15) minutes a day doing Mathcounts preparation instead of picking your nose (or whatever else you do to waste time :P) then you'll be super when it's time to compete.
POTD
Cool picture of the hulk. The head isn't quite what I had pictured, but whatever.
Ah, time for another gigantic debate related post!
Well, I justed wanted to let you all know, this tournament sucks major time. They ran almost an hour and a half late the whole time...and they messed up everyones results. I guess I only hate it so much, because I was 1. sitting around for a disgustingly long time and 2. their stupid tabulation staff messed up my results, so that I didn't get into the octo-final round even though I had won my double-octo-final round.
On the aff I running: Value: Justice, Criterion: Self-preservation, Contention 1: Law doesn't protect the victim, Contention 2: The victim can't run. The idea is self defense is always just, and since DDF is the only option through necessity we must use it.
On the neg I was running: Value: Justice, Criterion: Proportionality, Contention 1: DDF not proportional with various reasons.
Round 1: After this round I felt like "hurrrrr." I was negating (which with the current resolution meant I should have won, because neg always wins with this resolution) and his case was using some messed up criterion like 'retributive due', and it was the perfect answer to proportionality. So combined with some of my mistakes he won pretty clearly.
Round 2: Here I was against someone that seemed to be actually mentally handicapped. And on the negative he used a criterion of minimizing patriarchal violence, so I made the obvious response "When we kill the abuse the violence stops, thus I meet his criterion." To sum it up easy win. The only problem is I was in this library with about 50 other debaters and it got really noisy.
Round 3: I was on the aff here, an ominous sign. And despite my opponent's poor speaking skills he won, because he negated...grr stupid prejudice against aff.
Round 4: Blah, I lose on negative due to good speaking skills and persuasive arguments. The judge seemed to just have sided with her from the beginning. Whatever.
Round 5: I win on the negative against a case that could have killed me. Except for the fact that she included a card that said the abuser wanted to psychologically control the victim, so I turned it saying that the victim's life is never in threat, because at the point where the abuser kills the victim they lose control, so they never kill and DDF isn't proportional. Yay first neg win.
Round 6 (double-octo-finals) : I faced some horrible kid that was so bad I can't describe it. His only piece of evidence was a quote from Gandalf the Gray, so easy aff win. haha
And then they messed up my rounds and make me cry. :( Only I didn't cry, because I didn't know that they had messed anything up, because the double-octos were "hidden" meaning we didn't know they were special, so I thought I was just doing a normal round. So I didn't know to be upset until afterwards.
So sorry if you don't really care and all I've done is write a really long post, but I think you might find it slightly more interesting than my lectures on math, although this is less educational. Whatever.
POTD
Cool, not a big fan of the style, but the horse is well done.
Hmm, the UMTYMP test went okay. No more UMTYMP for three weeks, so I'm good. :D Argh, more debate...I'm feeling debate fatigue. Not too much more going on. I think I'm going to start a massive international boycott of Norton products, what suckyness.
POTD
Woo, another philosophy paper, English paper, physics test, and UMTYMP test. If I had a debate tournament this week I probably would have died.
Blargh. A Realm Divided is actually going somewhere, albeit slowly due to my math and stuff.
I got five new CDs today. :D So much listening to do.
POTD
Cool stuff, I like the castle in the background. The crows add a nice amount of atmosphere to the already moody looking palette.
Debate went okay. The tournament tried something really different, they group varsity and novice together, so I kept hitting people way better than me. Hitting varsity people means I didn't break, but apparently I'm somehow good at speaking now, so I won seventh best speaker, which is cool considering there were at least 150ish people there.
Argh, I've got to take a test for physics, and calculus soon. Life is so cruel sometimes, and by sometimes I mean all the time.
Haha, the second time you read Eragon (or as many times as it takes to get over Paolini being young and homeschooled) you notice that the book is steaming peice of crud. I'm very seriously thinking abou seeing Star Wars episode IV digitally remastered and placed in a medieval setting when it comes out on the 15th, just so that I piss off fan boys. And btw, the Eragon game I can guarantee will be a piece of crud.
POTD
So cool looking. O_O Seriously though, nice metal, nice lighting.
So I finished NaNoWriMo; though I don't really count myself as finishing until Esillisar stops having dreams of the ways with which he would disprove the theories of Madisonian democracy.
I also beat NetHack again about a week ago. Go me.
Going to another debate tournament in a few hours. *sigh* My cases still suck.
POTD
I'm really liking the 2D art work. Maybe even more than 3D... Cool dark looking image, not sure what it is, but whatever.
Debate was depressing as usual. Knowing that I could have gone to semi-finals, if only I hadn't gotten a first time parent volunteer judge that also happens to beat his wife.
Math League was even more depressing. Knowing MCGT wouldn't have been the last place team if I only had a single teammate.
My grades have been depressing, B/B- all around.
I'm depressing.
