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2020 Rules Proposals


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8 hours ago, xandandl said:

If you and DCI are NOT trying to hide anything, what good reason would you raise for not granting Poppycock his wish to read through the discussion and minutes of the committee which supposedly generated these proposals? You proport yourself as knowing who signed what and how. Poppycock usually seems to be reasonable, even insightful, often dramatic with his posts. Why not be transparent?  What is being hidden or feared?

Eh, it's not like trying to hold a trial without allowing prosecutors to call any witnesses. That is to say: while I may disagree with some of these proposals, I agree with garfield that there's nothing nefarious going on here, and unless the people in these meetings were told at the time that their remarks were later going to be published, I don't think they should be. We have the written proposals themselves to discuss, and that's really enough to make informed decisions.

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7 hours ago, garfield said:

I'm sorry, but this sounds like stuff from a grade school recess.

You're making contentions that DCI's proposals (I presume many, if not all) are motivated by career and financial gain of adults in the activity and the burden of proof lies with you, not with me when I call BS.  Until you do that, I can call it a BS contention and dismiss it out of hand, which is what I've done.

Hitchens

:bleah: (na, na na, na na, nahhhh)

 

Now in contrast to my previous comment in which I defended your position, here I'm going to push back a little. It is very likely that "career and financial gain of adults in the activity" does in fact play some role in their decision making. It wouldn't take too much imagination to come up with some hypothetical proposals that would be good for the activity but would put some of these decision-makers out of a job. And it's very difficult for someone to make a decision that might put him or her out of work. The directors are only human.

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24 minutes ago, Terri Schehr said:

That’s what they said about trombones. 

And as I predicted five years ago, they can't use trombones in anything but a full section without mic'ing them. They just have a small sound compared to baritones. So the notion of adding more weak instruments while simultaneously reducing field amplification doesn't exactly help the arrangers with the problem of balance. Not that I'll care about that if DCI adds woodwinds for 2021, I'll have stopped following the activity by then. We already have high school bands to show us how bad amplified woodwinds will sound and how weak they are without amplification.

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7 hours ago, cybersnyder said:

They don't need to provide proof to a bunch of yahoos on an online forum (I'm included in the yahoo category). They owe accountability to their member organizations. 

True (and I've already said we don't need to see these meeting notes), but what gets said here is at least indicative of some aspects of what DCI's fans will support.

That said, one of the most commonly used (and true) aphorisms online, "Twitter is not real life", easily adapts to fit our discussions.

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11 hours ago, Weaklefthand4ever said:

All future rule changes should be put into Middle English. I don't think it's being taught anymore in the US. That would probably avoid most leaks simply because people would fall asleep 4 sentences into the proposal. 

 

11 hours ago, Terri Schehr said:

Cue Beowulf

I'm going to be that guy:

First lines of Canterbury Tales (which is in Middle English):

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote

And bathed every veyne in swich licour,

First lines of Beowulf (which is in Old English):

Hwæt! Wé Gárdena      in géardagum

þéodcyninga      þrym gefrúnon·

hú ðá æþelingas      ellen fremedon.

 

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21 hours ago, Year Fiver said:

A tangent from the original discussion, but "increase the 154" is only well and good until you've actually worked support staff and logistics for a corps. 154 fits neatly onto four buses with just enough seats left over for alternates and equipment, so any additional bodies would require at least one additional bus, and empty seats is a wasted investment in a vehicle. Making ~250 servings per meal is already a gargantuan task for a single two-oven food truck as it is, so increasing the maximum by any more than a few bodies would require either a second food truck or a radical restructuring of how meals work (and we were already making so much progress away from pizza/hotdog/spaghetti rotations!), plus almost every corps is already consistently short on volunteers as it is. And since the max capacity of a food truck fridge and pantry are already limited, you would either have to invest in more vehicles with fridges/usable space or you would have to go on even more frequent shopping runs, which are a huge drain on admin time. You might also potentially have to think about throwing in an extra equipment truck if you get too big or have too much equipment to transport, and all these vehicles really add up, what with gas, number of drivers available (never enough), chartering, and maintenance. The logistics surrounding parking at shows is also quite a nightmare at some venues, and that's something I've heard firsthand from somebody who does do that job for DCI. Staff, admin, and volunteers already get shoehorned into practice rooms, classrooms, hallways, locker rooms, and all kinds of other less-than-ideal sleeping situations as it is, because even the schools that are willing to house 200+ people only have so many nice, open areas they can offer forth or are otherwise willing to risk damage to, so loss of housing sites and dramatically increased difficulty of finding places for everybody to sleep is also a consideration.

Without a proposal to bring in fresh volunteer/support staff faces, aid in funding for the extra expenses, and ease the massive burden that logistics already pose, advocating for an increase to the size of competing units is an empty platitude. Not to mention that growing corps that already have too many auditionees to handle does nothing about prospective memberships' disinterest in the other corps that are barely making numbers as-is.

Some valuable thoughts there.

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7 hours ago, garfield said:

Economics is lost on some people.  But the hole you've been sucked into is deep and dark (The "Dismal Science").

The real joke is about a guy who makes change exactly (four quarters for a dollar, five dimes for two quarters, etc) and, when ask, says that he makes it up in volume.  It was not a joke of buy-side economics and pricing power.

Like I said, the joke, and the economics, are lost on many...

Well, at least half of all economists seem to agree with the other two-thirds.

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7 hours ago, Lance said:

the discussion so far is lacking in flavor.  needs more salt overall. 

maybe when some of these rules actually get passed we'll get a little spicier?

don't argue with me unless you're prepared to provide bank statements and quotes from christopher hitchens.  

Just for anyone's reference: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens. He was a notorious contrarian, and there's not one quote there that everyone woudl agree with, but this one has some merit, I think:

"One of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority."

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34 minutes ago, Glenn426 said:

This worry about field crowding a mute point to me.. All of these drill writers write for their BOA bands and they are routinely 200+ members and they manage to find the right spacing, staging, flow etc..,

More of the field will be used.. 

Well, even the best BOA bands don't move anywhere near as much as many of the best DCI corps do.

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34 minutes ago, Jeff Ream said:

I don’t know anything specific. My hunch was this was the easier first step 

Adding woodwinds was deemed an easier change than increasing membership size?

That's fascinating.

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