Sorry for the lack of updates guys, I haven’t played much recently and have generally been busier than usual. Every summer I have a pretty large research project that entails assembling some five hundred pages of materials on the upcoming debate topic. These materials are then distributed for free to every urban debate league in the country, meaning that my work is reaching thousands of students. It’s rather time consuming and doesn’t pay nearly as well as poker, but it’s very interesting and rewarding work.
This year, the topic on which I’m working is Resolved: That the United States Federal Government should substantially increase its public health assistance to Sub-Saharan Africa. So I’ve been researching issues surrounding the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS, how best to stimulate research for a tuberculosis vaccine, and the ethics of food aid.
Many young debaters and UDL’s use this material as their primary and in some cases only debate material. Moreover, because it generally ends up online somewhere where an enterprising high school student (and debaters are nothing if not enterprising) can find it for free, I’ve found myself judging debates in which suburban teams were unknowingly making my own arguments in front of me. It’s kind of weird to think that I may be one of the most influential people in the world of high school debate, but that very few high school debaters would even recognize my name, let alone my face.
Anyhow, that’s where my time’s been going recently and where a lot of it will be going until August. I’m still going to update regularly here, but it may turn out to be more like five times a week rather than seven, we’ll see. Today, though, Todd and I are headed to Foxwoods to play satellites to tomorrow’s $3000 Mega Stack, so you’ll surely get a trip report out of that.