Using One’s Head

When I was in 4th-turned-8th grade, I was assigned the short story “Flowers for Algernon” in English. It appeared in one of those ridiculous textbook readers of stories that always comes with grandiose seventies-style illustrations and a total excess of…

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Top Nine Highlights and Lowlights for 2009

I’m thinking about compiling one of these for the decade too, but let’s look at what made 2009 great and not so great. In summation, looking back at this year, it’s been one of those seminal and all-encompassing annums. It’s…

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Mo Mentum

The sample size is only 41 hours, but December’s been awfully good so far. I wrote another 16 pages last night (early this morning), bringing December to a startling 8,149 word count (~32.5 pages) in just two overnight sessions, or…

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Good Tired

I woke up early today (really yesterday, but you know my schedule) because a friend of mine was coming over. Early these days is around ten or so in the morning. My friend (Ariel) and I met up with Em…

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Debate and Nuclear War

The final part of an 8-part series regressing through the Stanford 2002 APDA tournament. Last week: Round 2 (re: chemical weapons) Today’s round takes us back to the beginning of the tournament, the first filmed round of my career since…

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Crime vs. Convention

Part 7 in an 8-part series regressing through the Stanford 2002 APDA tournament. Last week: Round 3 (re: Enron executives and their wallets) Today’s round features one of my favorite opp-choice cases from my senior-year case-writing binge. The case was…

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Enron and the Cops

Part 6 in an 8-part series regressing through the Stanford 2002 APDA tournament. Last week: Round 4 (re: Stalin vs. Lenin) Today’s round is the only time in my career where I remember someone running a counter-case against an opp-choice…

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The 20th Century: All About the Soviets

Part 5 in an 8-part series regressing through the Stanford 2002 APDA tournament. Last week: Round 5 (re: Native American Reparations) Today’s round features one of the best cases I ever hit in my tenure on APDA, run by a…

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