Northwest Christian University Forensics

Extemp: Word choice problems

2012-02-12T15:55:00.001-08:00

Slightly premature devotional

2012-02-03T16:56:00.000-08:00

Another side of me. This is the adult students' devotional for April, which I recorded last summer and didn't think they'd put up this far in advance. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Forensics scholarships at NCU

2012-01-28T17:59:00.000-08:00

List of majors at NCU.

The Speech Communication program at NCU.

More good extemp introduction material

2011-12-29T14:18:00.000-08:00

A friend sent this along to me this morning, and it looks like a gold mine of good extemp attention getters for international topics. Here's how you could use it: a few days before the tournament, you think about which countries are heavily featured in the news, and then you browse through the curiosities listed for the country, find your two or three favorite, tell them to two or three friends in enough detail to commit them to memory, and they're perfectly legit, non-canned attention getters.

For example: Greece has been in and out of the headlines over its contribution to Europe's currency woes. So if there are major new developments, and you think the odds are good you'll wind up with a Greece topic, you might read up on the Antikythera mechanism, or the Necromanteion of Ephyra, either of which could make spiffy opening devices on a wide array of topics.

Merry slightly late Christmas, and happy almost new year.

What game are you playing?

2011-12-11T08:29:00.001-08:00

One from the vault: are turnarounds legitimate?

2011-12-10T19:32:00.001-08:00

Topicality as eligibility

2011-12-03T11:21:00.001-08:00

Apologetics 2: Ecclestiastic Boogaloo

2011-11-20T14:05:00.000-08:00

What's below is a follow-up to this post, prompted by the top comment from Betsy McPeak. No more preface; go back and read if you're not yet in the picture. Here goes:

Speaking from within that particular argument's assumptions, I think the distinction between winning the arguments and winning the audience isn't sharp. It's like asking whether a fire produces light or heat. We don't typically light candles for warmth, and we don't typically light bonfires to help us find a lost contact lens, but all fires produce both. The point I borrow from Ehninger in premise five is that argument itself brings a relationship into being. I'm not talking about building up credibility derived from expertise, and I'm not talking about Sam Harris working an audience; I'm saying William Lane Craig and Sam Harris entered into a relationship with one another by submitting to mutual correction. Argument in front of an audience is one thing, but argument between arguers, the retail version of what Craig and Harris peddle wholesale, can break down barriers of non-engagement and alienation if it's handled deftly. I should note, just to take the edge off the quip in my first three sentences that it's not necessary to win the argument for the relationship-strengthening to occur; simply conducting oneself in a respectful and secure fashion during the argument is sufficient.
Speaking as a communication scholar, I don't think tilting the balance in favor of being more human and relational is the way to go. Richard Petty and John Cacioppo's Elaboration Likelihood Model locates that approach on the peripheral route, and predicts that it will result only in weak attitude change that's unlikely to persist over time, resist counterpersuasion, or shape future behavior. They say a central route approach, which involves scrutiny of evidence and reasoning, is far more likely to yield strong attitude change. Put in business terms, a peripheral route appeal can swing an impulse buy, but only a central route appeal can result in brand loyalty. The problem is, people only process persuasive messages along the central route if they agree that the subject matter is highly relevant to them, and if they are fully able to process the message. If Petty and Cacioppo are right, and a good deal of research suggests they're onto something, then the apologetic enterprise needs to allot some of its focus toward preparing listeners, as opposed to preparing appeals. That might take the form of helping people understand that what Christ did cannot be ignored, that the reality of the universe's Creator, His relationship with His creation, humanity's sinful and fallen nature, all are realities that can't be brushed aside; that money and popularity and every kind of physical pleasure numbs for a time the need to have those answers, but it never banishes them and the cost of trying to ignore them is unacceptable. It might also take the form of helping people put aside distractions, as well as grounding appeals in the most concrete, familiar, up-close illustrations possible, stripping them of every trace of church jargon. Petty and Cacioppo's model says if people have high motivation to hear the message, adequate ability to think carefully about it, and they then hear a strong, well-crafted persuasive appeal, they'll be persuaded. The persuasive effects of audience-courting like Sam Harris' antics are, praise God, short-lived and weak.
Speaking as a Christian and a student of Christ's teachings, I look at John 6:44 and 65, and I worry that we're over-thinking this, and taking too much into our own hands. I don't have an easy answer to questions of election, irresistible grace, etc., and I think when we try to wordsmith formulas to explain God, we utterly waste our time and create more ignorance than we undo. I do take note of 1 Peter 3:15, and certainly part of the Bible's charge that I continue to grow in my faith, to abide in Christ, includes being willing and prepared to talk out my thoughts and explain to the best of my ability any of the puzzling questions that are stumping a sincere questioner. But I also believe in divine appointments, and I think the best approach to take to such encounters is to trust that whom God calls, He also equips, and that in every case He sees what people's needs are. So long as I do my best to be patient and gentle and conduct myself the way I should in other interpersonal encounters, God will take care of the rest. We don't have to pick between having our facts straight and being sufficiently warm; we're the nurses, not the doctor. God will do the prescribing, not us.

Those are my follow-up thoughts. I'd welcome further dialogue on this, as it really does help me refine the conference paper I hope to write either over Christmas or this summer.

Last Beacon Standing

2011-11-07T06:54:00.000-08:00

Humor is one of the tools in the toolbox of both the speaker and the interpersonal communicator, but it's rarely studied in any detail in the Communication classroom. That's unfortunate, because there's a fair amount of scholarly work that yields some important insights, and there are also important Biblical teachings about being deliberate and careful with humor. So, this term I taught a special topics class, "Humor and Stand Up Comedy," and the culmination is a showcase this Friday night. If any of you just happen to be coming to the NCU Preview Day this weekend, you'll get a chance to see the full performances live. Here's the campus ad for it:

Extemp Introductions

2011-11-05T11:01:00.000-07:00

Quote Garden

The Week's 10 Best Political Jokes

50 Greatest Movie Moments

Futility Closet

Apologetics

2011-11-04T07:03:00.000-07:00

I posted this on my personal blog back in January as a first attempt at framing a paper I planned to submit to the National Communication Association annual conference. My plans changed, and I didn't submit it, but this work is still in my queue. Probably over the summer I'll get serious about fleshing it out, but as I was re-reading it this morning, it hit me that some forensics folks might find it interesting, so here goes:

Premise number one: Christians exist for the purpose of drawing near to God. We can only do so, we can only bridge the alienation brought about by our sin, because Christ took the punishment and reconciled us to God. Once we accept this, we are in right relationship with God, God's children, and from there we walk daily with Him, growing nearer to Him as the Holy Spirit works to conform us to the image of His son.

The important bit: the Christian life is relational.

Premise number two: this relational essence makes it the higher priority than message content in things we say to, about, and in service of, God. Paul Watzlawick wrote in Pragmatics of Human Communication that every message has a content dimension and a relational dimension. If a wife asks her husband to lift something heavy for her, and he, watching TV, says "I'll come do it at the next commercial," he may think she's just made a simple request and he's agreed to do it within a reasonable time, which is what the content conveys, but she may fume that he treats her as less important than the television, which is a relational message. Transferring that concept to this discussion, much of what we do, including Bible study, including worship, including prayer, including fellowship, including serving people in need, involves producing and consuming utterances, each of which has a content and relational dimension, but if premise number one is correct, then the relational dimension is always dominant over the content dimension.

The important bit: what we say is never as important as the way our sayings position us relative to God.

Premise number three: our relationship with God is primarily instantiated in a single dialectical tension, not the several that turn up in relationships between humans. Leslie Baxter's work argues that people experience the desire to be together and apart, to be open with one another and maintain privacy, to work up a repertoire of traditions and be spontaneous, and that the life of a relationship is the endless collaborative balancing of those tensions. But all three are meaningless in the relationship between human and God: we're never apart from God, we have no privacy from Him, and we cannot surprise Him. Instead, I tentatively assert that our dialectical tension in relating to God is wisdom vs. innocence. God calls on us to trust Him with a childlike faith, but also allows us to argue with Him, even occasionally letting us win the argument.

The important bit: our relational positioning with God drives us to find the right mix of trust and critical acuity.

Premise number four: Christian argumentation has to date been dominated by an apologetic tilt, which has much in common with multi-vitamins. Taking One-A-Day® can be a good idea if someone's diet actually lacks an important nutrient, but anyone who eats a balanced diet doesn't need such supplements. It's been said that Americans, who lead all other nations in consumption of vitamin pills, simply have the world's most expensive urine. Worse, in some cases high doses of vitamins can be toxic. The fit of this analogy comes from the largely unacknowledged dangers of apologetic argumentation; where someone's faith is crumbling because they can't get over a reasoned objection to Christianity, then apologetic work is a vitamin, correcting a deficiency. But where people pursue such arguments for their own sake, they risk damaging their faith. C. S. Lewis, widely regarded as the contemporary champion of apologetics, repeatedly warned people not to attempt to build up their faith by winning debates, insisting that his own apologetic work had weakened his faith, and the only correction was to experience God's presence directly. Again, the relationship was far more important than the content.

The important bit: trying to win arguments that prove God's existence or other Christian teachings can address specific obstacles to faith, but is equally likely to weaken it if deployed unnecessarily.

Premise number five: The proper role for Christian argumentation can be understood along the lines of work done by Doug Ehninger in the late nineteen sixties: argument as mutual correction, as a way of granting personhood to another, making oneself vulnerable to another and thereby building a bond. God shows us by joining in argument with us that He is not distant, detached, uninvolved, and as we argue with Him, we are forced to accept correction where we are wrong. Similarly, the arguments we have between ourselves should be opportunities to build fellowship, to grant one another the dignity of making our reasons explicit and being open to persuasion by the other, to surrendering our positions when they are successfully refuted. In all these instances, the relationship is far more important than the content. Rabbinic scholars fell into the trap of adding layer upon layer of content over the Torah, drowning it in commentary and judgments, at the price of a dynamic and engaged relationship with God and one another, and if we pull back from unnecessary apologetic argument and instead use argument as exploration of difference and a procedure for building trust, then we arrive at a more robust and sturdy bond.

The important bit: argument as procedure has the potential to strengthen relationships, and the Christian life is relational in its essence. ■

I know I'm using argument in incommensurable ways, between us and God and between person and person, but that's one of the things I'll get sorted out.

Counterplans, permutations and disposition

2011-10-29T15:01:00.000-07:00

Takeouts and turns

2011-10-23T15:47:00.000-07:00

Thoughts after West Coast Classic

2011-10-16T14:01:00.000-07:00

Extemp Coaching Challenges

2011-08-22T15:30:00.000-07:00

LD: Requests for Admissions

2011-08-18T15:23:00.001-07:00

Another platform speech idea

2011-08-18T15:21:00.001-07:00

TP: The US Postal Service

2011-08-04T11:01:00.000-07:00

Extemp tips for non-beginners

2011-07-27T15:31:00.000-07:00

Extemp tips for beginners

2011-07-27T15:30:00.000-07:00

LD: More on freedom and security

2011-07-25T17:26:00.001-07:00

TP: Military sales

2011-07-25T14:02:00.000-07:00

TP: Fiat justitia ruat caelum

2011-07-25T13:49:00.000-07:00

LD: Marvin Frankel

2011-07-25T13:46:00.000-07:00

Military Courts

2011-07-21T15:35:00.001-07:00

Platform speech ideas

2011-07-19T18:19:00.000-07:00

More on Revenue Generation

2011-07-18T16:01:00.000-07:00

Due Process vs Facts thoughts

2011-07-18T15:16:00.001-07:00

Criminal Justice thoughts

2011-07-13T20:03:00.001-07:00

Freedom vs. Security thoughts

2011-07-12T16:37:00.001-07:00

Revenue Generation thoughts

2011-07-12T14:27:00.000-07:00

Click here for the spreadsheet of federal receipts

Speech Communication at NCU

2011-06-02T16:38:00.000-07:00

Conceivably of interest to people who've done forensics and are college-shopping.

Anti-Values

2011-04-02T14:00:00.000-07:00

LD Affirmative Argument: Absurd "rights"

2010-07-24T11:01:00.001-07:00

And here's another one.

TP Case Idea: Cyber warfare

2010-07-24T10:16:00.000-07:00

A Human Capital Crisis in Cybersecurity

First Thoughts on the LD Topic

2010-07-18T16:39:00.000-07:00

Speech topics and an interp piece

2010-07-12T17:03:00.000-07:00

Russia Topic: First Thoughts

2010-07-12T16:14:00.000-07:00

Impromptu Speaking and Topoi

2010-04-07T07:26:00.000-07:00

LD: Laundry list

2009-08-31T16:06:00.000-07:00

Part One

Part Two

TP: A disadvantage idea

2009-08-31T16:05:00.000-07:00

Part One

Part Two

LD: A good read

2009-08-01T15:35:00.000-07:00

This looks quite good. You might be able to track it down at a nearby library, or you might need to order it from the publisher. While you're at it, see if you can find a copy of this book too.

TP: Topicality on single pollutant or single medium

2009-07-22T09:09:00.000-07:00

LD: Margaret Mead and sports

2009-07-18T09:49:00.001-07:00

LD: Decisionmaking

2009-07-14T10:34:00.000-07:00

TP: Affirmative ideas

2009-07-14T10:33:00.000-07:00

Delivery: Demeanor

2009-07-13T12:47:00.001-07:00

LD: Social capital, Camus, etc.

2009-07-13T12:39:00.000-07:00

TP: Movement disadvantage

2009-07-09T09:02:00.000-07:00

Part One

Part Two

LD: More on preempting balance negatives

2009-07-08T16:04:00.000-07:00

Impromptu Speaking

2009-07-08T16:03:00.000-07:00

LD: Stuart Brown and National Institutes of Play

2009-07-06T15:40:00.000-07:00

Last night I listened to a radio interview with Dr. Stuart Brown, a former professor of psychiatry and neurology, and now director of the National Institute For Play. In case you prefer reading to listening, here's the transcript.

A fascinating point he made about halfway through the interview: he said that he distinguishes competition from contest. He thinks of competition as just one person measuring her or himself against another, and that it only becomes a contest when you have to have a winner, a loser, and domination. I think affirmatives might be able to use this to very good effect, and he's got quite impressive credentials. It's worth checking out.

LD: More ideas and a reading list

2009-07-01T10:56:00.000-07:00

Part One

Part Two

So after yesterday's lengthy reading list for the TP topic, I didn't want you to think I was slacking off on the LD topic.

Same offer as I made the TP folks: if you're within travel distance of Eugene, Oregon and would like to sweep a library, I can offer you a classroom at Northwest Christian as your staging ground and your debrief room, and I can be there to bounce ideas before, during and after such a library assault. You can get both the TP and LD kids together and get a lot done in one trip.

Here are some books from the U of O collection that probably hold promise for the LD topic:

Agonistics: arenas of creative contest, Janet Lungstrum

Children in cooperation and competition : toward a developmental social psychology, Emmy A. Pepitone

Competition in theory and practice, Terry Burke

Competition policy in America: history, rhetoric, law, Rudolph Peritz

Competition, cooperation, efficiency, and social organization: introduction to a political economy, Antonio Jorge

Competition, trust, and cooperation: a comparative study, Yuichi Shionoya

Competition: the birth of a new science, James H. Case

Cooperation and competition among primitive peoples, Margaret Mead

Cooperation and competition in humans and animals, Andrew M. Colman

Cooperation and competition in the global economy: issues and strategies, Antonio Furino

Cooperation and competition: theory and research, David W. Johnson

Co-opetition, Adam Brandenburger

Dynamics of interpersonal competition and cooperation: the experience with competition and subsequent cooperation, Byungjune Chun

Economics, competition and academia: an intellectual history of sophism versus virtue, Donald Stabile

Ethics and excellence: cooperation and integrity in business, Robert C. Solomon

Excellence: can we be equal and excellent too? John W. Gardner

Handbook of transformative cooperation: new designs and dynamics, Sandy Kristin Piderit

Hot spots: why some teams, workplaces, and organizations buzz with energy-- and others don't, Lynda Gratton

In search of excellence: lessons from America's best-run companies, Thomas J. Peters.

Learning together and alone : cooperative, competitive, and individualistic learning, David W. Johnson

Moral sentiments and material interests: the foundations of cooperation in economic life, Herbert Gintis

Pluralism: against the demand for consensus, Nicholas Rescher

Rambo and the Dalai Lama: the compulsion to win and its threat to human survival, Gordon Fellman

Sport in Society, Jay Coakley.

The complexity of cooperation: agent-based models of competition and collaboration, Robert M. Axelrod

The cooperative sports & games book: challenge without competition, Terry Orlick

The death of competition: leadership and strategy in the age of business ecosystems, James F. Moore

The spirit of community: rights, responsibilities, and the communitarian agenda, Amitai Etzioni

The survival game: how game theory explains the biology of cooperation and competition, David P. Barash

I don't have a list of journals, because there aren't journals set aside for this problem area the way there are for pollution and other environmental issues, but on the U of O research computers you'd have access to a number of search engines that would help you dig out articles in game theory, social psychology, law reviews, etc. that would equip you for both sides.

Let me know if you make it to my neighborhood, and we'll set something up.

Sweeping The Library

2009-06-30T14:47:00.001-07:00

Sweeping The Library, part one

Sweeping The Library, part two

At the end of the video, there's an invitation to people in or near Oregon to come sweep Knight Library at the University of Oregon, and use one of our classrooms as your staging ground. You can bounce ideas with me, or debrief and sort your articles into categories after you get done.

What's below is the bait I'm dangling in front of you to tempt you to come. It is by no means an exhaustive list of all the books or journals in the U of O library that I think you and a club ought to check out. This is just scratching the surface. You can find some awfully good evidence that no one else has, if you're willing to roll up your sleeves and work hard.

Books I think you should at least look at. Every last one of these is a 2009 book, and all are in the U of O library:

Becoming good ancestors: how we balance nature, community, and technology, David Ehrenfeld

Blue-green coalitions: fighting for safe workplaces and healthy communities, Brian Mayer

Conservation psychology: understanding and promoting human care for nature, Susan Clayton

Contagion and chaos: disease, ecology, and national security in the era of globalization, Andrew T. Price-Smith

Diagnosis mercury: money, politics, and poison, Jane M. Hightower

Doing environmental ethics, Robert Traer

Energy in a changing climate, Martin Nicholson

Environmental economics: an introduction, Barry C. Field

Environmental law and justice in context, Jonas Ebbesson & Phoebe Okawa

Environmental politics: stakeholders, interests, and policymaking, Norman Miller

Global warming and the political ecology of health: emerging crises and systemic solutions, Hans A. Baer

Investing in a sustainable world: why GREEN is the new color of money on Wall Street, Matthew J. Kiernan

Love God, heal Earth, Sally G. Bingham

Nature in common?: environmental ethics and the contested foundations of environmental policy, Ben A. Minteer

Nested ecology: the place of humans in the ecological hierarchy, Edward T. Wimberley

Recalibrating the law of humans with the laws of nature: climate change, human rights and intergenerational justice, Burns Weston

Smart green: how to implement sustainable business practices in any industry and make money, Jonathan Estes

The economics of climate change policies: macroeconomic effects, structural adjustments and technological change, Rainer Walz

The environmental food crisis: the environment's role in averting future food crises: a UNEP rapid response assessment, Christian Nelleman

The global deal: climate change and the creation of a new era of progress and prosperity, Nicholas Stern

The human right to a green future: environmental rights and intergenerational justice, Richard P. Hiskes

Two billion cars: driving toward sustainability, Daniel Sperling

Unquenchable: America's water crisis and what to do about it, Robert Glennon

Why we disagree about climate change: understanding controversy, inaction and opportunity, Michael Hulme

Yellowstone and the snowmobile: locking horns over national park use, Michael J. Yochim

And here is a partial and preliminary list of the available journals I think you should at least skim through the past couple of years, picking out and copying (or emailing to yourself) the best articles. All are in the U of O library collection, some in hard copy and some through their electronic databases:

Biology and environment

Buffalo environmental law journal

Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America

Business Strategy and the Environment

Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy

Clean water report

Colorado journal of international environmental law and policy

Dickinson journal of environmental law & policy

Duke environmental law & policy forum

Ecological and environmental anthropology

Ecological applications

Ecological complexity

Ecological economics

Ecological engineering

Ecological indicators

Ecological informatics

Ecological management & restoration

Ecological modelling

Ecological Monographs

Ecological research

Ecological Restoration

Environmental and ecological statistics

Environmental Conservation

Environmental Economics and Policy Studies

Environmental engineering and policy

Environmental history review

Environmental Policy and Law

Environmental pollution. Series A, Ecological and biological

Environmental protection

Environmental science & policy

Environmental science and pollution research international

Environs

Global Environmental Change

Groundwater monitor

Human and Ecological Risk Assessment

Inside EPA's environmental policy alert

International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology

International journal of sustainable energy

Journal of arid environments

Journal of Developments in Sustainable Agriculture

Journal of environmental assessment policy and management

Journal of environmental policy & planning

Journal of Regulatory Economics

Journal of renewable and sustainable energy

Journal of the Air Pollution Control Association

Journal of the IEST Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology

Missouri Environmental Law and Policy Review

NAFTA: Related Environmental Issues and Initiatives ( Policy Papers )

Pace environmental law review

Pollution Engineering

Regulation

Remote sensing of environment

Sustainable development law & policy

The environmental forum

The Open Environmental Pollution & Toxicology Journal

UCLA journal of environmental law & policy

Water, air, and soil pollution

EPA arguments, aff tips, and a good book

2009-06-26T18:49:00.000-07:00

Extemporaneous Speaking Tips

2009-06-25T10:25:00.000-07:00

Part One

Part Two

LD Topic: Definitions and negative approaches

2009-06-24T17:15:00.000-07:00

Part One

Part Two

Proof of concept for the EPA topicality argument

2009-06-23T11:20:00.000-07:00

Thomas C. Downs, attorney, American University Law Review, Fall 1992, p. 159
Accordingly, a number of bills have been introduced in Congress to regulate green marketing claims. The bills offer two divergent approaches to the problem. The first approach divides the responsibility for green marketing regulation between the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the agency responsible for environmental policy, and the FTC, the agency responsible for enforcing laws against deceptive advertising.

Jacqueline Karnell Corn, Associate Professor, The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, Environmental Public Health Policy for Asbestos in Schools: Unintended Consequences, 1999, p. 16
Before proceeding further it is necessary to present some important technical concepts, seldom explained to the public or to Congress, and thus poorly understood. They were underutilized or even ignored by EPA, the regulatory agency responsible for environmental policy. The concepts include: threshold, extrapolation from high dose to low dose, and risk assessment.

Louie Gilot, staff reporter, El Paso Times, May 18, 2005 p. 1B
While the EPA is responsible for environmental policy, "there is a great deal that others can do to make sure that children are protected from environmental threats," William H. Sanders III, acting director of the Office of Children's Health Protection, said in a news release about the award.

Scott Shepard, staff reporter, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, January 31, 2001, p. 3A
Whitman also was confirmed by the Senate, 99-0, to take over the EPA, which is responsible for environmental policies. She will resign as governor of New Jersey a year shy of completing her second and final term.

Platform Speaking: Topic Ideas

2009-06-22T18:01:00.000-07:00

Part One: Expository

Part Two: Persuasive

2009-2010 TP Topic: First Thoughts

2009-06-21T19:33:00.000-07:00

Part One

Part Two

Team Policy Topic: A Bit Of Archaeology

2009-06-19T07:39:00.000-07:00

It'll be a few days before I post my first thoughts on the TP topic, because, to be perfectly honest, I'm scratching my head over the wording. Don't get me wrong: there are clearly angles. But it's going to be a slightly longer process than with the LD topic.

What I'm offering today is something from very long ago. The NDT/CEDA topic in the 1996-97 season required affirmatives to strengthen regulations that required a decrease in environmental pollution, and what I'm posting here are links to intelligence reports from two key tournaments that year. The University of Northern Iowa was the season opener, so the affirmatives and negative arguments were brand new and untested. The University of Southern California tournament took place over Christmas, so that was the mid-season status report.

Many of the arguments you'll see listed are not at all current anymore. These lists are just a tad under thirteen years old, and things have changed. But they're good food for thought, and a few might still be viable. If you're ready to start thinking about next year, start here, and in a few days I'll have some thoughts up.

2009-2010 LD Topic: First Thoughts

2009-06-18T16:05:00.000-07:00

Part One

Part Two

Part Three