 I am not here for the camera. Okay, so see it doesn't even see me. I'm like a disembodied voice. It sees your hand Are you in the flow lecture? Come on over here. We'll have to recool at the end of the session if it doesn't go well. Here we go. Trees die from this. I hope it provides wisdom. There we go. I should probably do it. Alright. This is the lecture on flowing, the lecture on flowing. Relax and go with the flow, man. That's exactly what it says up here. One of the things you have to do to do well in debate is to recreate what your opponent says so that you can recall 30 minutes later as other arguments have been made precisely what that is when you're wrapping up for the judge at the end. If you do not have an accurate record of what's gone down, you're going down because you're not going to be able to win the round. I'm going to talk about some basics today. I'm going to do a little exercise with you at the end and as you will notice from this so you shouldn't really look too far into this because then you'll be seeing the answers. I'm going to read you a really abbreviated prime minister constructive. I'm going to have you try to flow that and I'm going to tell you before we do it how you can have that enhanced and then at your own leisure, because I've only got about 45 minutes with you after that, it becomes false imprisonment or kidnapping. I'm not sure which. I forget from law school. You can actually check it against what I said to go back and see, oh yeah, that's what he said and oh that worked or it didn't work. Starting off, this gives you stuff I really don't want to spend a lot of time on but a rundown of the tools, the flow structure of the flow content. You have copies of all of this. You'll notice on tools it talks about pens. Now, duh, but I am a firm believer that the pens you use are really, really important and so a big ballpoint pen is not going to write fast enough. I right now love the Pentel Energenl Liquid Ink pens. Oh, there you go, right there. So anything liquid ink goes fast enough. Is that like a big ballpoint pen? No, it's like a thin, thick marker. It's adorable. Here, do like a little thing on it. I want to see what... Oh yeah, yes, yes. So I don't want like a gelatinous bluff, like big pen. I want something flowing, so you can be able to go fast enough. I personally like the fives, 0.5, 0.7 is bigger, not as scratchy. You're going to just have to buy them and see what you want. The other thing is they're pilot-precise v-points that are great, but through many years' experience they explode when you travel by air. So every year I would go to Nationals and I would open my pens and I would have this blue ink all over me like I had some inappropriate relationship with a smirk or something. So I mean, you need to like make sure that it's contained within the barrel of the instrument and not causing problems otherwise, okay? Any questions on that on the pens? The next thing I want to talk about a flow structure. This is really important because intuitively if you start writing what your lecturer says, you just start writing. You need to think of a piece of, excuse me, a roll of toilet paper to visualize as to how you flow. And what I mean by a roll of toilet paper is one continuous long sheet that would theoretically enable you to do the first speech in one column, the second speech in another column, the third speech in another column. Again, assuming on-case arguments coming out of the Prime Minister, okay? And the reason for that is if you do not have columns, you're not going to be able, as this chart shows you, you're not going to be able to put line by line responses down. If you trail and you get to the bottom of the piece of paper, that first speech, and put it up at the top of the second column, there's no space to permit you to put that red ink denoting the opposition's arguments, okay? Does that make sense to everybody? So you want columns. Similarly, in debate they have what are called on-case and off-case positions. I am a firm proponent of trying to use a lot of different pieces of paper to keep the debate straight, especially when you get into open. That means you should have your resolution analysis, your background information, and maybe the plan on the first piece of paper. Maybe put the plan on a separate piece of paper, because you want to be able to maintain that integrity as the debate gets involved and complicated and people start changing orders of arguments to literally flip through your pieces of paper and put them in the order that the speaker chooses, okay? So for example, when I go here, I'm looking at harms here and impacts. So that's what I've got on that first sheet, okay? And then I get over here to a disadvantage. That's an off-case position, okay? Off-case. I generally like to have the affirmative in blue ink or black ink and the opposition in red to keep the argument straight as to who's talking. Red is sort of like a vampire drawing blood, because they're the ones that, wow, attack, okay? So think about that. Too creepy? Sorry. So put red just to be another color. Do green if you want a life-affirming force, okay? So on-case blue, right out the gun, and then opposition arguments are going to be in red. Also, I do urge you to flow disadvantages on separate pieces of paper. I urge you to flow counterplans on separate pieces of paper. I urge you to flow topicality on separate pieces of paper, okay? Now, I know this seems like it's wasteful, but as you get into open, you're going to have to have the ability to move stuff around. If you start putting it on one piece of paper, it's going to get confusing. Okay? So are we clear on that? Yes, ma'am? Not big enough. Not big enough. You want to have those. Some people use 8 1⁄2 by 11. Some people use that legal legal stuff, the 11 by 17 or whatnot. You have to kind of decide. Some people like lines. They don't use lines. I pretty much use typing paper regularly, paper like that, although you can use lines if you want. Any questions about the tools or the structure of the flow? Okay? So the main thing is you got to do it in columns. Okay? And you got to write small enough and leave enough space to be able to put the arguments in there. Okay? So let's take a look at some of our slides here and highlight where we need to go. First, and again, you have this written down, I believe, in the back. I wanted you guys to focus on learning rather than trying to be a shorthand court reporter here. I believe you have this in the back. Somebody say yes, because I... Yeah, yes. Okay, awesome. So, four functions of the flow. Oh, gosh, you're going through puberty again. Four functions of the flow. First is a memory aid to help you in later speeches recall what the dude said, or do that. That's a quote there. Okay? Also an organizational aid. It lets you conceptualize the debate. Okay? Into, okay, here are the advantages, here are the disadvantages. Here's that topical. Here's that counterplan. Here's that topicality argument. Okay? It also is going to help you reveal opponent's weaknesses. And the way it does that is three ways. It illuminates the position. Okay? A precise flow is going to trigger a response in you, and I'll explain that in a second. It also illuminates contradictions. Once you see stuff written out, it's going to actually make it easier, especially in the course of the debate, if your brain goes back to it five minutes later. Oh, yeah, that's what it meant. But the minute it goes on one ear and out the other, it's not going to happen. Okay? It also helps illuminate emissions. So, let me give you an example. Let's say somebody's running a topicality argument against you. How many of you know what a topicality argument is? Raise your hand. Okay? Let me give you a quick example. Let's say the resolution is, resolve the United States should abolish the death penalty. U.S. should abolish the death penalty. Somebody give me a quick idea as to what you think I'm going to be running is my affirmative case. What am I going to be doing? Yes. You, just because I thought you, you still don't know what I'm going to be doing. It doesn't take less of crime. It doesn't prevent crime. But what are you going to do when the resolution is, the United States should abolish the death penalty. What are you going to do? Yes? Maybe you're going to dismantle this. Right. So, how many of you think the affirmative under that resolution is going to be running capital punishment? Raise your hand. No. Okay. Capital punishment. Raise your hand. What do you think they're going to be running? Legislative. No, no. The resolution says the United States should abolish the death penalty. My question is how many of you think the affirmative is going to be ending capital punishment? Okay. All of you. Right. There's nobody that's not raising your hand. And that's because you're smart and you have common sense. And you're sitting there all prepped, having gone 20 minutes, coming up with killer reasons as to why one ought not abolish the death penalty. Now, the affirmative gets up there and says affirmative has the right to define. We define the death penalty as the estate tax. That penalty that attaches upon a death to disgorge assets from an estate. And therefore we're going to abolish the estate tax for the following five reasons. And you're going, right, so you're going to run a topicality argument on that. Okay. And you're going to, by the end of the day, I hope, with lectures you attend, realize that there are four basic parts of a topicality argument. Okay. There's going to be, okay, an interpretation, basically where the affirmative says, or excuse me, the negative says, we're going to run a topicality, first off case position, on death penalty. First off case position is on the phrase death penalty. Subpoint A is interpretation. Okay. We interpret the resolution to mean death penalty is capital punishment. B is the violation. B is the violation. The affirmative defined death penalty as the estate tax. Subpoint C, standards. Subpoint C, standards. Okay. We think, according to common usage, according to grammar, according to dictionary definition, that our interpretation of death penalty as capital punishment is the most reasonable. It checks out with Google searches. It checks out with the dictionary. It checks out with all the stuff that is not on drugs. Okay. And then D are our voters. D are our voters. And you start off by saying, judge, this is an upright or a voter, meaning that you look here first. That's Latin to basically say we're looking at it first. And then the reasons, a priori is not a reason. A priori is a placement of consideration of the argument. Okay. A priori is a consideration for placement of the argument. Then you give your reasons, like fairness, education, and PDA rules and whatnot. Yes, ma'am. I just want to make sure I understand this. So if you're disagreeing with their definition. The negative runs topicality. The interpretation is the negative's belief on what it should be defined as, which in this case would be capital punishment. Okay. And the reason I'm giving you this, because it may sound like, oh, wow, I thought I was like in a float election. Why am I talking topicality? The reason I'm showing you that is, it eliminates omissions. So if there are no standards provided by the negative, the affirmative gets up and goes, look, we have the right to reasonably define. They give you no standard supporting their alternative interpretation as to why they're more reasonable. Therefore, we default back to what I told you in the first place. And finally is defined as the state tax. Right, state tax. Okay. So flows eliminate, excuse me, eliminate stuff that's missing. They're also going to eliminate contradictions. Okay. And finally, they're an excellent closed round tool. I have laid out in front of me here all of my float charts from state championship two years ago. Rounds one, two, three, four, five, six golden rods. And so I can go over those with my team. I can talk about them. I can talk about mistakes and smart things other teams did. And it's a great way to recreate the round. You're not going to be able to recreate the round if you throw the thing away. So hold on to them. Okay. Does that make sense? Any questions? So, ta-da! A good flow is like a good horse. You can ride it to victory. Everybody go nae. Yay! Oh, yeah. Enjoy. I think the all guy in the middle is Yule Brenner. That's the magnificent stuff. Okay. And what do good cowboys and cowgirls need for the best ride? Yeah, the saddle. Yes! I said, we need a horse, but I couldn't get an acronym for it, so I did Saddles. Yes. So our acronym up here is Saddles. Okay. And you've got this written down. I love acronyms because they are sort of like a cheat sheet of the brain. Okay. And so here are the elements of an effective flow. We're going to go down by these one by one. Okay. Side by side arguments. In other words, being able to put one argument next to the one that was flowed at the prior speech. Okay. So you have a correspondence of arguments. You also need to abbreviate arguments. And this is a slide on here a little bit that is going to show you what I mean by that. If you write out in longhand the United States federal government every round you go into is like, dude, later, that's a waste of ink. It's USFG or FG, or just GOV. Okay. Make it shorter. Obamacare or Patient Protection Affordable Care Act. OC. Death penalty. DP. Uniqueness. U. Topicality. T. Disadvantage. DA. Counterplan. CP. Make your stuff short and abbreviated. Hi there. Are you in here for the flow lecture? I just had to leave for a second. Oh, okay. You've got your little... Okay, awesome. So abbreviated arguments are really important. By the way, it's important that you be able to read your arguments and you be able to interpret them. Not your coach, although he may ask you, what were you doing here? And you just have a bunch of letters that say, well, I know what I'm doing, but you don't. But he's going to ask you to translate. Kind of a rosette of stuff with it, all right? It's also going to highlight dropped arguments. Because when you make an argument on a flow and the opponent does not respond to it, you should put a little circle indicating dropped argument. And a lot of times what happens in debates, if you don't make a response at your first opportunity, that is deemed to be conceded. And if it's conceded, you want to bring that up in subsequent speeches. Okay? So for example, sometimes negatives get told by their coaches, oh, just go off case. Run disadvantages and counterplans and topicality. Don't even bother or waste your time with the affirmative case. Now, I'm not going to argue with your coach because that may be better than I am and then I'd lose and then I'd be in therapy and that's all bad and sad. But I will tell you this. The consequence of dropping the affirmative case is that you let that PMR stand up at the end of debate and go, notice the affirmative case is entirely conceded, which means we get total access to the impacts on our advantages. You're not going to weigh those against our arguments against their disadvantages. This is totally uncontested, 100% solvency. Now let's take a look at the disadvantages. We're going to minimize the disadvantages and show you we're going to be able to have that beneficial situation. You don't want to be sitting there on the other side and going, oh, dude, and then you should have challenged the case a little bit. What do you think? Okay? So you've got to make sure you have at least something up there. At a minimum, cross-apply your disadvantages to the affirmative case and perform the impact calculus indicating that you are better. And again, impact calculus of those magical words, time frame, it's going to happen sooner, magnitude, it's going to happen a whole lot bigger, probability, a whole lot more likelier, time frame, probability, magnitude, time frame, probability, magnitude. That's how you perform impact calculus. Even for debaters like me who can't do math, that's an impact calculus you can do without getting a wrench, okay? Next, divide paper into off and on case sheets. I've already described that to you. Disadvantages, topicality, separate pieces of paper that we read from the presentation, okay? Legible writing, duh. If you are writing in hieroglyphics and you don't understand ancient Egyptian, you're screwed. Bad, bad, bad. You've got to be able to write and read, okay? You also want to enumerate points. And you by a way want to speak with points this way too, okay? So you say contention one, sub point A, sub point B, sub point C. If you were on a date sitting under a tree, you would never say, hi, I've got a really good evening for us playing today. Roman numeral number one, we're going to go to San Francisco Giants' Game, okay? Sub point A, we're going to get nachos. Sub point B, we're going to find our seats. Sub point C, we're going to have a beer. Okay? Roman numeral number two, we're going to take a very right home. Very right home, yes. No, you would not talk that way on a date if you wanted a second date, right? Right, okay? But in debate, you've got to signpost it. If you don't signpost, you're going to have problems. If I had high blood pressure, this would not be a good way for me to do it. I could keel over at any second. But fortunately, I don't have high blood pressure. Okay? Finally, you need to have spaced room to flow responses. Don't like smoosh everything together, okay? You know, communal living, hippie love stuff, Woodstock, that's fine. Not on a flow chart. If you don't allow space between arguments, and then give the elaboration of the other team, you're going to have, what, look at here. I've got space in here to respond to this first one. But if I have these two close together, if they're going to be contested issues, and after a while, you'll understand what's contested and what's not, you're going to have all the arguments smashed together. Not a good idea. Okay? Okay. Moving forward. All right. We have a little break here. We're 15 minutes in. Everybody stand up. Everybody stand up. We have the old style of horses and saddles. So, who knows how to do this? Okay, come on over here. I don't have no height. I was not going to go up. No, you won't be on camera. Nobody can see you now. Nobody's in front of camera. Say, do this. Do this with a little thing of saddle to make that. Now, they notice he has no saddles, but he looks cool, but we need saddles in debate. So, do this. Do this. Come on, come on. Go, go, go. Oh, yes. All right. Everybody try that. Come on. There we go. Come on. There we go. That's it. All right. There we go. This is educational horses. This is what your tax dollars are going for. All right? Gang style. Thank you. Everybody, what's your name? Nikki. Nikki Clapper. Nikki. God us, Nikki. Oh, you know, Motley Crew's basis is called Nikki Six, but that's like a guy. Did your parents Motley Crew fans? No. Okay. Moving on. Let's talk about these saddles and go for them point by point, and then we're going to do our little exercise here and see how we're doing it. First, side by side placement. It's a must because it enables you to flow things in columns and keep the arguments alive. It obviously also lets you see omissions when they don't respond to something, and there's blank space there. Okay? Any questions on side by side? Really, really important. Okay? Side by side. Number two, abbreviated arguments. We talked about that before, USFG or FG, Obama, O, Boehner, B, Nice, B, Boehner, okay? You can do whatever you need so long as you can translate it, okay? And by the way, what's going to happen is if you're flowing a debate at the beginning, it's kind of intimidating because you wonder, what am I supposed to flow? You're not transcribing it. You are not a court reporter. But one of the things we're going to do with the example I read off here is for example, if I say, glad to be here everybody. Let's get down right to it. My first observation is resolution analysis. The A sub point is policy route, okay? You will literally just have to go RA for resolution analysis, capital A underneath that number one and put policy. Now I'm going to tell you it's a policy because of the presence of an active verb or it's a value because of the presence of an evaluative term or it's fact because of the presence of something that at least theoretically is empirically provable or not. But so long as you get down its policy, we're going to go. Now you may have a disagreement with that. How many of you debate for two-year colleges? None of you? Oh, okay. All right. You know where you go to school, don't you? I do. I forget. Okay, where do you go to school? City college. That's a two-year. Yes. Very good. So if you are a two-year school, there are two tournaments during the year where the bylaws of the governing organization, California Community College Forensics Association or FIRO-PAI, the National Community College Organization, stipulate that two of the rounds at the state and national championships will be policy. Two of the rounds will be value and two of the rounds will be metaphor, which could be anything, okay? That means if you are in a round and I've seen this done at the state finals for God's sakes, if you are in a round where the judge has value written on their ballot, it's a value round, kids, and the other team tries to run as a policy, you can actually run what's called a tripod, which doesn't really get used a lot, but arguing that the other team has incorrectly interpreted the resolution. And you can tell that because you've got value or policy written up in your resolution analysis right there in black and white, and you know grammatically it's something else. Again, the flow chart enables you to see that and enables you to write the response to it. So abbreviated arguments are important. This one, by the way, this is one of the reasons why I gave you that handout, because otherwise you're all sitting there now going, wait, wait, I need 10 minutes to copy down the slide. But I put this up here just to give you an example of all of those potential ways to abbreviate stuff. Counterplan, CP, Disadvantage, DA, Plan, P, Overview, O, K, Critique, Affordable Care Act, Supreme Court, all that stuff. You can also use things like arrows for increase or decrease for those little side arrows greater than or less than. Number three, dropped arguments must be noted, big circles, that way you can see them in the heat of the debate as the debate progresses. Draw circles next to arguments that the other side drops that you could then bring forward. Okay? I mean, you probably, even if you've never debated before on the van ride here, heard a little bit about the importance of topicality. Basically, if an affirmative government team is not topical, meaning that they're supposed to debate the Kyoto Protocol and instead they're debating Sheez, or Jimmy Page and Hendrix, who's a greater guitarist. If you don't debate, who's at Page? I am so old, I saw Led Zeppelin in 1977, April play at Chicago Stadium. They were awesome. They were awesome. And during the encore, Jimmy Page came out and they were going to play during the Stairway to Heaven. He has the big Gibson ES double neck guitar, okay? He starts playing it. I swear to God, this is true. The peg on the heel of the guitar somehow came loose from the strap and this heavy guitar, I don't know if you've ever played one of these, I have, they're quite heavy, dropped down. He caught it with his knee. He's still playing the intro of do, do, do, and whatever that song is. A little roadie runs out, runs out, reattaches the peg of the guitar and then runs back and hang it on him and he continues playing again. Let's have a round of applause for Jimmy Page. Oh yeah, Tom was saying, when you move, you're going to make you sweat, you're going to make you groove. That's right. So I have no idea why we got on that tangent. Dropped arguments are going to be noted. Any questions about that? Next, divide paper into on-case and off-case stacks. Okay, briefly, off-case arguments, warranting separate pieces of paper are topicality, disadvantages, counterplan. Topicality, disadvantages, counterplan. Similarly, on-case arguments that may warrant separate pieces of paper are advantages, maybe plan, and maybe definitions. Okay, now if you debate, you're going to get a more of a feel for what works and what doesn't. Yes, sir, in the back, our cameraman. Actually, I got the answer from the side. I just wanted to, I was going to repeat the thing, but it's on there already. Okay, cool. All right, so divide them into stack. Don't put disadvantages, counterplan, and topicality on the same pages, and don't put them on the government-case pages. It's your arguments, it's your off-case positions. Does that make sense? All right, number five, legible. You don't need to belabor this. Right, so you can read it. Otherwise, why bother to write it? It makes it look like you're busy, but that's, you know, that's posing. You don't want to be a poser. You want to be a debater. Right? Six, enumerate points. That means list arguments with Roman numerals, Arabic numerals, uppercase, lowercase, all that good stuff. Write down the sub-point labels, because otherwise you're going to get lost and muddled. On the third thing that the guy said about point D or J or K, I think it was like, there's no warrant. Moving on, it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, go to the C-point on the topicality argument. Oh my God, there is no C-point. That means there's no standards. That means there's no reason to prefer their interpretation. Let's go back and interpret death penalty as the estate tax moving on. Okay? Now be careful. In novice division, sometimes judges will do the work for people that forget things. Oh, he forgot standards. That's not important. Yes, it is important. And you need to get up there and tell them that. And say, look, debate is a critical thinking exercise. Debate is about having you, the judge, weigh what is presented. Not you, the judge, take sides as the third person. As the third debater on the team, you need to acknowledge that there are no standards here. It's an improperly run topicality. It falls off the flow. Okay? Now they may come back and add them, which means you still may have to deal with them in the PMR, but that's what happens sometimes. Some judges will simply go topicality first chance to be raised, topicality inadequately raised, topicality gone. It depends on the judge. And finally, space those arguments so that you've got room to have more elaborate responses. Okay? A two or three line thing in the original speech may warrant a five space response. Space your arguments enough. And if you're using single pieces of paper, that will enable you to have the space to do that. Okay? All right. So we ride off into a bright future, just go with the flow. One more time, young lady, Nikki, stand up, do it again, and then we're going to do our exercise real quickly. All right, stand up. Here we go. Whoo! Whoo! Oh, she's got that. Oh, there you go. There you go. All right, that's fine to go. What I need you to do now is take out a piece of paper and a pen. And I'm going to read this and you're going to blow it and then we're going to talk about it. So everybody give me like an eye contact with a magical moment and I'll know that you're ready and then I'll start with you. Should I try to do my creepiest stare possible? Fun. Oh, that is creepy. I want to protect him from that moment. You got to put the lipstick outside the lips. Oh, that's bad. Thank you. There you go. There you go. All right, so everybody's got a pen out. Everybody's got a piece of paper. Boys and girls, I want you to be happy because when I was debating, I had to use dinosaur blood and bones to flow on papyrus. Okay, I'm mixing my ages here because papyrus was invented after the dinosaurs but my point is I didn't have a lot of technological advances you have. You have these liquid gel pens. All right, so here we go. Try to flow remembering the importance of abbreviations and leaving space and we'll see how you do. So here we go. And I'm not going to read it fast. I just want you to be able to get it. So here we go. You have a copy of this too. Thanks for all being here. Let's debate. The government team will support the resolution that the death penalty should be abolished in the United States. The death penalty should be abolished in the United States. Observation one is Resolution Analysis, Subpoint A, Resolution Type, Subpoint A, Resolution Type. This is a policy round because of the presence of an active verb should be abolished. Subpoint B, Definitions. All terms will be contextually defined. Subpoint C, Decision Mechanism. Today's debate should be evaluated through net benefits. The team that demonstrates that their advocacy produces the greatest net benefits should win the round. The weighing mechanism gives both sides access to the most ground. Observation number two, background. 1,000 people have been executed in the United States since 1976. Today, thousands are on death row, costing tens of millions of dollars in scarce societal resources. Courts are clogged with these extraordinarily expensive appeals, and Columbia Law Professor James Liebman found that 1 in 20 death row inmates were found not guilty. Wrongful executions have occurred and are obviously not reversible. DNA has exonerated 15 individuals since 1952, but that evidence is not always available. Therefore, the government proposes the following plan. Here's our plan. Subpoint A, Agency. Since the resolution authorizes that the death penalty be abolished in the United States, the plan's agency shall be all state and federal governments. Subpoint B, Mandates. All state legislatures and the federal government shall immediately declare the death penalty illegal. All existing death sentences will be converted to life without the possibility of parole. Subpoint C, Funding. This plan requires no funding because it's going to save money through the elimination of layers of appeals unique to death penalty cases. Subpoint D, Enforcement. The plan will be enforced through the executive and judicial branches of government. Subpoint E, Addendum. All existing death penalty statutes will be declared void. All existing death penalty statutes will be declared void. So, the plan produces two advantages. Advantage 1, Tagline. Plan saves innocent lives. Plan saves innocent lives. Subpoint A is the uniqueness. In the present system, innocent people have been wrongly executed because of flaws in the legal system. A Columbia law professor says 1 in 20 death row inmates are found not guilty. 15 people have been executed wrongly since 1992. That's too many. B is the link. B is the link. Plan passes outlawing the death penalty, replacing it with life sentences without the possibility of parole. Subpoint C, Internal Links. There are four. Number one, ending the death penalty means no more wrongful state sponsored termination. Ending the death penalty means no more wrongful state termination. Let's stop for there for a second because we're running a little short on time and there's something with the handout that I need to correct. Let's see how we are so far. How many of you by a show of hands think you're kind of keeping up? Raise your hands. How many of you are totally lost? Okay. If you're totally lost, what do you think would help that? Is it the phrase of the terminology? It's hard to write or find variations for certain words. Like what? Give me an example. Things like clogged. Clogged? Yeah. Maybe that's not what I mean. I'm not talking about these kind of things. Some things like illegal I could remember off my head. One of the things that I'll have, yes, go ahead. I was going to say that in my case there's a lack of practice I have at writing these down. I was keeping up and writing all sorts of stuff down but I doubt it's in a very prettyish format that would be super useful. Here's the first question. How many of you were able to at least compartmentalize what you were writing? You've got advantages in a place that's distinct. You've got resolution analysis in a place that's distinct. Maybe you have a plan in a place that's distinct. If somebody says, let's go to the plan I have an argument for solvency. How many of you could instantly locate where the plan is on what you wrote? Raise your hand. How many of you could instantly locate the advantage? How many of you could locate the resolution analysis? Yes, we've got a question. I actually kept up and wrote most of what you said down my problem. I guess it's just organization keeping it all together. Although I was doing what you were doing with different piece of paper, I didn't even write something and then I have to go back and you might flow and I don't know what the hell I wrote. What's going to happen is you debate more. You're going to come up with your own symbols for common words. Your coaches probably have you prepping by reading the news and being up on current events. When somebody says for you, for example, the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, you have heard that and it's familiar. You probably could put down in the context of a debate on Obamacare, OC or something like that. You want to remember you are at the very front end of debate. This is not natural. A lot of debate is not natural. The signposting, the writing stuff down. Jargon and things like topicality and nuanced arguments. What's the difference between an effects tea and a regular tea and an extra tea? What am I supposed to do? As you get more and more familiar with the activity, it's going to come. The key thing is you have got to give yourself permission to fail. You have got to give yourself permission to be able to learn. A couple of years ago I gave a flow lecture and I emailed the gentleman at the time the number one ranked NPDA debater in the nation. I figured wow, he should know, right? I emailed him and I said Brandon. His name is Brandon Merrill from SIU. I said Brandon I typed it and it says he's too far away to hear me. I said Brandon I typed Brandon. What's his name? Brandon. Everybody say hi to Brandon. He's an awesome guy. I'm getting better at that. I said what are your words of wisdom? He says well, I never flowed very well in terms of being able to handle speed. It became familiarity, it became abbreviations, it became being able to anticipate. That enabled me because I was physically not flowing as fast as I might otherwise to get the meaning down to understand when I saw those symbols what response needed to be made. For example, when I say to you if you've never done debate before, resolution analysis, you're going really? What's that? As you get through the debates today and the lectures, you're going to kind of realize oh, okay, resolution analysis looks at how that resolution is broken down and can do a large part determines what the game is going to be about. So what are the terms? What is the weighing mechanism? What is the type of resolution? It's important to know the type of resolution because that's what trigger you into which set of stock issues are relevant. So if you have a policy round because of the presence of an active verb, you know its policy, that in your brain triggers four obligations assuming topicality, but four obligations on the party affirmative. They have to present a harm. And that harm has to be significant in both qualitative and quantitative terms. If that's missing or if they lose that, standard debate theory indicates they lose the round. Affirmatives have to carry all four stock issues. Okay? And so if your flow chart ever has an affirmative team in a policy round with no plan, guess what? That is a prima facie failure. They have not given an alternative to solve the problem as alleged and they lose the round. Now I hate to say this, but I will. We had a team of ours, a novice team several years ago. They broke into the elimination rounds of the University of the Pacific. Great tournament. Everybody's excited. They got in there. It was a policy round. We thought we had that. Until the leader of opposition, constructive, got up and pointed out and said they didn't read a plan and so they don't meet their obligations and so we win. And Santa Rosa lost. I should have been fired for that. Turn the table. But that's what happened. So your flow chart can tell you, oh my god four stock issues, there's no plan or there's no inherency or there's no advantage. There's no solvency. Yes sir. So you bring that up in your time like when you have your six minutes or whatever else that you actually bring up. Whatever side did not bring up the plan that they had any sort of plan? So you wouldn't do presumptuous to tell the judge we win the round? No, no, no it's not because essentially you are an advocate and as a contest and the judge is going to determine which side presents the better arguments and the more compelling case because he will determine the winner at the end of the round. And your job is to make as compelling a decision as possible. Now what you don't want to do is take out a gun and go vote for me. Okay, that's wrong. See look, okay, standard debate theory indicates that when you fail to present a private facial case, in this case by omitting a plan to provide solvency for the harms alleged they have failed in their fundamental burden they don't uphold the resolution it's too late to bring it up in the subsequent speeches because they then moved to the LOC this debate is over. They failed to present a private facial case in the initial speech that's their obligation. Standard debate theory is if you fail to present a private facial case results in a loss to the affirmative team and you tell them that. Don't just kind of go well it may be bad, you decide I don't know, whatever No, you tell them, you failed to present a private facial case that mandates an affirmative ballot excuse me, negative ballot negative ballot, okay, proposition Any other questions? No I will look into this I actually I'm a little bit surprised with the order on this and so it may be when I sent this in that they morphed it and so I will certainly make sure that when the video as well as the online accompanying file for this that it reflects the proper material. The one thing you do have though if you go on the back that is the summary of the PowerPoint slides okay you also have the correct description of tools, flow structure and flow content you also have the beginning of that analysis and connection with the death penalty debate to kind of go back and check at least to where I stopped reading okay, and again there appears to be some mistake in the handout regarding chronology but certainly it serves its purpose for being able to have you check against that. Does anybody have any questions I believe I'm holding out like about three minutes left everybody's good, no questions whatsoever the final words I would give you and this is really really important. You have to be gentle with yourself, you have to understand that there's a learning curve and you have to be very forgiving you have to be very very forgiving the fact that you are all here on a Saturday morning when you could be doing God knows what is a testament to your tenacity your desire to learn and your focus and those are things that are going to help you when you get out and beyond debate. I debated a long long time ago and I went to school for twenty years and I can tell you that in twenty years of education that includes three years of law school there was no more valuable activity than forensics. I did it in high school and I did it in college and the things that I did and that I was able to expand as far as my ability and my judgment are still things I reflect back on now when I face adversity it is going to give you the mental strength, the cognitive skills and some emotional maturity to deal with life issues beyond whether you win the round that's kind of inconsequential the main thing is to be able to learn these life lessons that are inherent within the activity and to be able to mature and grow and apply them when you get out into the world or apply them in other interpersonal situations and other academic situations I am a firm believer in forensics as a place to forge minds and I am a firm believer in the activity and if you have no more questions I am going to let you out two minutes early alright, we good? good for you and well that's how I cut you can cut that right there