A Rose By Any Other Name...

...would still get eaten by a goat.

Today in the realm of debate there was not much debate happening. Class began and we had another student teach the class, who did okay. He covered one chapter and he did a solid job of it, but he's not as interesting as Rodney is.

After he finished his short teaching presentation, we discussed the debate from yesterday some more. Rodney asked for the arguments we thought were most persuasive, and I mentioned that the oppositions's argument that corporations want money, and what would prevent Twitter from selling the private information of anonymous users to opposing governments who are willing to pay. I really liked that argument, even though the proposition never really addressed it and opposition didn't really force the issue that much.

When our debate conversation finished, Rodney told us all to pack up and follow him outside the building. We walked from Ives Hall to the Arts Quad and to the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. Once there, he handed out a sheet of paper with a project on it. The project was to go into the Museum and find one piece of art that "called out to you," in a subjective way. Then, over the weekend, we are to create an objective argument for the art piece using evidence and following the argumentation outline by using data, warrant, and claim.

My art piece was a painting of a thistle plant with small moths and animals taking shelter or hanging out around it. In my three minute speech, I'm first going to spin a web of linguistic poetry, to draw in my listeners, before going through the why and how  this art piece is objectively great. At least that's the plan, I guess we shall see on Tuesday how that goes...

The Painting

After debate class I went back to my dorm to work on my painting presentation, but at 4:00 PM Stephen, Thao, Joe, Justice, Melissa, and myself went to play frisbee and volleyball. It was fun but Joe didn't play because he wasn't wearing contacts and couldn't really see at all. (he couldn't tell the volleyball wasn't a soccer ball...) At 5:00 PM everyone but me went to go swim while I went back to my dorm. It was actual lane swimming and I decided I would rather blog and work on homework. 

After dinner, Stephen, Justice, and Joe went to the gym again to play basketball, while Melissa, Thao, and I went to make fun of them. They got crushed playing 3 on 3 against a tall opposing team. While they were in the process of getting ground into dust, Melissa and I went to play badminton with these two other boys who were just as bad as we were. (thankfully) It was fun but it wasn't very skilled playing. 

By this point it was 7:30 PM and I went to watch the women's World Cup game at RPCC. The USA and China were playing, and in the second half the USA scored the only goal to win  (!!!!!!) the match 1-0. They advance to the semifinals next Tuesday, I believe.