2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

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2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

Talk about individual questions here.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by 1992 in spaceflight »

May I see the tossups on Alexander I and Old Capulet from DII?
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Gaterion »

Could you post the tossup on slavery in Brazil, please?
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

DII ICT round 3 wrote:This ruler of the Quintuple Alliance called the Congress of Troppau and removed Alexander Ypsilanti from the leadership of the Greek revolt. After his death, forces loyal to his apparent successor Constantine revolted in the (*) Decembrist Uprising. After his country was routed at the Battle of Friedland, he signed a treaty with the French at Tilsit. For 10 points--name this tsar who ruled during the Napoleonic Wars.
DII ICT round 10 wrote:This uncle of the "fair Rosaline" promises newly arrived gentlemen that "ladies that have their toes / Unplagued with corns" will dance with them. He later prevents Tybalt from starting another fight that would disrupt the courting of his (*) daughter by County Paris. This father of Juliet is known only as the "Old" member of his family. For 10 points--name this bigwig of Verona, the longtime rival of Old Montague.

answer: Old _Capulet_
DI ICT round 12 wrote: Resistance to this institution was centered at settlments called quilombos, like the one found at Palmares. The senzala was the site of this institution, according to the title of a social history by Gilberto Freyre. It expanded in the first half of the 19th century along with the (*) coffee industry, but was formally ended by the Golden Law of 1888, which built on the 1871 Law of the Free Womb. For 10 points--name this institution abolished one year before the fall of a South American empire.

answer: _slavery_ in _Brazil_ (accept equivalents such as _Brazilian slavery_; prompt on "slavery")
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by 1992 in spaceflight »

bt_green_warbler wrote:
DII ICT round 3 wrote:This ruler of the Quintuple Alliance called the Congress of Troppau and removed Alexander Ypsilanti from the leadership of the Greek revolt. After his death, forces loyal to his apparent successor Constantine revolted in the (*) Decembrist Uprising. After his country was routed at the Battle of Friedland, he signed a treaty with the French at Tilsit. For 10 points--name this tsar who ruled during the Napoleonic Wars.
DII ICT round 10 wrote:This uncle of the "fair Rosaline" promises newly arrived gentlemen that "ladies that have their toes / Unplagued with corns" will dance with them. He later prevents Tybalt from starting another fight that would disrupt the courting of his (*) daughter by County Paris. This father of Juliet is known only as the "Old" member of his family. For 10 points--name this bigwig of Verona, the longtime rival of Old Montague.

answer: Old _Capulet_
I didn't really hear the first part of the Alexander I tossup, which confused me for a minute, but all of the clues are good. I liked this tossup.

The Old Capulet tossup, I think, should have said also accept "Lord Capulet," although I buzzed off of half-remembered knowledge, so it's possible I'm wrong.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by akessler »

MickeyR0urke wrote:The Old Capulet tossup, I think, should have said also accept "Lord Capulet," although I buzzed off of half-remembered knowledge, so it's possible I'm wrong.
The moderator in my room accepted Lord Capulet from the other team, although apparently according to Wikipedia:
Wikipedia wrote:Capulet is the patriarch of the Capulet family, the father of Juliet, and uncle of Tybalt. He is very wealthy, but he is not an aristocrat; that is, it would be incorrect to refer to him as "Lord Capulet".[4]
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Muriel Axon »

I was really tempted to say "Lord Capulet" but I managed to restrain myself to just "Capulet," not so much out of knowledge but caution.

Could you please post the DII tossup on leptons? I think it might have been from Packet 6.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Steeve Ho You Fat »

Qmwne235 wrote:I was really tempted to say "Lord Capulet" but I managed to restrain myself to just "Capulet," not so much out of knowledge but caution.

Could you please post the DII tossup on leptons? I think it might have been from Packet 6.
Yeah that. I may have misheard, but I know at least one other person who knows things about physics made the same neg as me at the same place as me, and I'm kind of annoyed I didn't protest it now. Lepton number isn't conserved 100% of the time, by my understanding, and I don't remember if the clue did correctly consider the exceptions to it.

Beyond that though, I liked this a lot. I thought the difficulty was appropriate to the field while having answers that, on the whole, decent teams could get, while the top teams got a good amount of powers but were still challenged.

EDIT: To specify, it was #1 in packet 6.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Muriel Axon »

A few more thoughts: Overall, I think the question difficulty was appropriate, and the questions were well-written, just like Joe said. Just to toss out examples of questions I thought were too difficult for the vast majority of teams, I doubt many were able to get The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, or the bonus on William Inge. I'm not complaining because I didn't get them (I actually did get the one on The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas) but the Inge bonus in particular seemed like the type of question that teams would either 0 or 30.

Could you please post the bonus on famous counts in literature? I don't think there was anything technically wrong with it, but I remember thinking it wasn't very good.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by 1992 in spaceflight »

akessler wrote:
MickeyR0urke wrote:The Old Capulet tossup, I think, should have said also accept "Lord Capulet," although I buzzed off of half-remembered knowledge, so it's possible I'm wrong.
The moderator in my room accepted Lord Capulet from the other team, although apparently according to Wikipedia:
Wikipedia wrote:Capulet is the patriarch of the Capulet family, the father of Juliet, and uncle of Tybalt. He is very wealthy, but he is not an aristocrat; that is, it would be incorrect to refer to him as "Lord Capulet".[4]
I actually had to protest that question as the mod (I think it was Isaac from Maryland) negged me for it (I understand the rationale for the neg completely, and it was resolved in our favor). I just seemed to remember him being called Lord Capulet at some point in the play.

EDIT: A quick google search reveals sources calling him both Lord Capulet and saying not to call him Lord Capulet.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by touchpack »

Hey, could you post the parity tossup (D1)?

I remember the tossup saying that the eigenvalues of "its operator" are +/- 1. As far as I can discern from my textbook and the internet, the same applies for spin. Can someone more knowledgeable tell whether or not the clue is ambiguous and to me why?
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Muriel Axon »

I actually had to protest that question as the mod (I think it was Isaac from Maryland) negged me for it (I understand the rationale for the neg completely, and it was resolved in our favor). I just seemed to remember him being called Lord Capulet at some point in the play.

EDIT: A quick google search reveals sources calling him both Lord Capulet and saying not to call him Lord Capulet.
Paris and the nurse both refer to Capulet as "my lord." But then again, the nurse refers to Romeo as Juliet's lord, and Romeo is certainly not Lord Romeo Montague, so I'm not sure how relevant that is. The phrase "Lord Capulet" never appears within the text of the play, as far as I can tell.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by 1992 in spaceflight »

Qmwne235 wrote:
I actually had to protest that question as the mod (I think it was Isaac from Maryland) negged me for it (I understand the rationale for the neg completely, and it was resolved in our favor). I just seemed to remember him being called Lord Capulet at some point in the play.

EDIT: A quick google search reveals sources calling him both Lord Capulet and saying not to call him Lord Capulet.
Paris and the nurse both refer to Capulet as "my lord." But then again, the nurse refers to Romeo as Juliet's lord, and Romeo is certainly not Lord Romeo Montague, so I'm not sure how relevant that is. The phrase "Lord Capulet" never appears within the text of the play, as far as I can tell.
I haven't read the play since my freshman year of high school, so I don't really remember. I also really liked the set. I felt like the history and a lot of the lit was really good. I felt like Toklas is gettable, but that Inge bonus really felt like a 30 or 0 bonus.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by jagluski »

MickeyR0urke wrote:
akessler wrote:
MickeyR0urke wrote:The Old Capulet tossup, I think, should have said also accept "Lord Capulet," although I buzzed off of half-remembered knowledge, so it's possible I'm wrong.
The moderator in my room accepted Lord Capulet from the other team, although apparently according to Wikipedia:
Wikipedia wrote:Capulet is the patriarch of the Capulet family, the father of Juliet, and uncle of Tybalt. He is very wealthy, but he is not an aristocrat; that is, it would be incorrect to refer to him as "Lord Capulet".[4]
I actually had to protest that question as the mod (I think it was Isaac from Maryland) negged me for it (I understand the rationale for the neg completely, and it was resolved in our favor). I just seemed to remember him being called Lord Capulet at some point in the play.

EDIT: A quick google search reveals sources calling him both Lord Capulet and saying not to call him Lord Capulet.
Isaac did a very good job handling this situation. I would share more information about the protest resolution, but I was not in the room at the time it occurred. I'm hoping R and/or Jeff will see this message soon and walk everyone through their logic on how this was decided.

Thanks.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

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DII ICT round 6 wrote: The Drell-Yan process generates pairs of these particles from hadron collisions, and the rishon model represents two of them as TTT and VVV. In the Standard Model their namesake number is conserved but their family numbers are not, as exemplified by (*) flavor oscillations of neutrinos. The strong force does not affect--for 10 points--what class of elementary particles that includes the tauon and electron?

answer: _lepton_s (accept _lepton number_)
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

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DII ICT round 4 wrote:For 10 points each--what literary works feature these counts?

A. Count Isidore Ottavio Baldassare Fosco, created by Wilkie Collins

answer: The _Woman in White_

B. Count Guido Franceschini, created by Robert Browning

answer: The _Ring and the Book_

C. Donatello, Count of Monte Beni, created by Nathaniel Hawthorne

answer: The _Marble Faun_
DI ICT round 5 wrote: Friedman and Telegdi saw changes in this quantity in pion decay chains. Its namesake operator has eigenvalues plus and minus one, and corresponds to reflection through the origin. This quantity's maximal violation was seen in the angular distribution of electrons from beta decay of polarized (*) cobalt-60 nuclei in an experiment led by Madame Wu. For 10 points--weak interactions do not conserve what quantity whose inversion is grouped with charge conjugation and time reversal in the CPT theorem?
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by mastaloo »

I forget the exact theme of the bonus, but I congratulate whoever wrote the bonus part on fado music. Never expected that to come up.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Muriel Axon »

DII ICT round 6 wrote: The Drell-Yan process generates pairs of these particles from hadron collisions, and the rishon model represents two of them as TTT and VVV. In the Standard Model their namesake number is conserved but their family numbers are not, as exemplified by (*) flavor oscillations of neutrinos. The strong force does not affect--for 10 points--what class of elementary particles that includes the tauon and electron?

answer: _lepton_s (accept _lepton number_)
Okay, the clues about the Drell-Yan process and the Rishon model are specific. The clue that threw the two Joes (both of whom know things about physics) off, as mentioned earlier, was the one about conservation.

I really wish I had remembered the fado bonus, because fado songs are really cool.

I'm not very happy about the count bonus, but there's nothing in particular that's wrong with it, so there's nothing I can really complain about.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Cheynem »

Count bonus seems somewhat comically hard, particularly with no other clues for those works.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

Could the bonus on Jewish banking families be posted? I believe the final bonus part wanted "Barings," and I don't think the Barings were Jewish. At least, I ruled that out as a possible answer because they are "The Rothschilds' gentile competition" in my mind, and a little cursory looking around confirms that. Perhaps the question isn't actually worded so as to imply that all the answers are Jewish bankers--or I could just be wrong.

Otherwise, I was very pleased to have a question on the Dixie Chicks. Finally good music comes up in quizbowl trash. So thanks.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by touchpack »

bt_green_warbler wrote:
DI ICT round 5 wrote: Friedman and Telegdi saw changes in this quantity in pion decay chains. Its namesake operator has eigenvalues plus and minus one, and corresponds to reflection through the origin. This quantity's maximal violation was seen in the angular distribution of electrons from beta decay of polarized (*) cobalt-60 nuclei in an experiment led by Madame Wu. For 10 points--weak interactions do not conserve what quantity whose inversion is grouped with charge conjugation and time reversal in the CPT theorem?
Well, now I just feel kinda dumb for not recognizing the leadin, in addition to already feeling dumb for not waiting for the 3rd clue to buzz.

But anyway, yeah, I don't understand how the 2nd clue doesn't also apply to spin.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by setht »

From the DI general discussion thread...
DI ICT round 10 wrote:For 10 points each--answer the following on acclaimed TV miniseries of the 1980s:

A. This adaptation of a Colleen McCullough novel featured Rachel Ward as Meggie Cleary, who falls in love with Ralph de Bricassart while living at the {sheep} station Drogheda.

answer: The _Thorn Birds_

B. This adaptation of a James Clavell novel starred Toshiro Mifune as Lord Toranaga, who triumphs at Sekigahara with the help of John Blackthorne.

answer: _Shogun_

C. This "King of the Miniseries" appeared as Ralph de Bricassart on ~The Thorn Birds~ and John Blackthorne on ~Shogun~ after playing the title role of the TV series ~Dr. Kildare~.

answer: (George) Richard _Chamberlain_
DI ICT round 1 wrote:She will voice Susan Frankenstein in a remake of ~Frankenweenie~, and voiced Sally in ~The Nightmare Before Christmas~. For 10 points each--

A. Name this actress who learned to play autoharp and composed "The Catheter Song" for her role as Mickey Crabbe, who sings the duet "Kiss At the End of the Rainbow" in a 2003 film.

answer: Catherine (Anne) _O'Hara_

B. O'Hara plays Marilyn Hack, one of three actors who get swept up in Oscar buzz surrounding the film ~Home for Purim~, in this 2006 comedy directed by Christopher Guest.

answer: _For Your Consideration_

C. Christopher Guest co-wrote ~For Your Consideration~ with this man, who appeared as O'Hara's singing partner Mitch in ~A Mighty Wind~. He also plays Jim's awkward father Noah Levenstein in the ~American Pie~ films.

answer: Eugene _Levy_
DI ICT round 10 wrote:Problems with a fat suit led this man to abandon his 2004 role as Count Fosco in a {musical}. He played Hero in the film ~A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum~, and sang "It Only Takes a Moment" to Marianne McAndrew's Irene Molloy while playing Cornelius Hackl in the film ~Hello, Dolly!~. He sang "The Mirror (Angel of (*) Music)" with Sarah Brightman in a role that also saw him sing "The Music of the Night." For 10 points--name this Englishman who created the title role of ~The Phantom of the Opera~.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by setht »

Tees-Exe Line wrote:Could the bonus on Jewish banking families be posted? I believe the final bonus part wanted "Barings," and I don't think the Barings were Jewish. At least, I ruled that out as a possible answer because they are "The Rothschilds' gentile competition" in my mind, and a little cursory looking around confirms that. Perhaps the question isn't actually worded so as to imply that all the answers are Jewish bankers--or I could just be wrong.
DI ICT round 5 wrote:For 10 points each--name these European banking families:

A. Founded by Mayer Amschel, this Jewish family rose to prominence during the Napoleonic era.

answer: _Rothschild_

B. This family bankrolled the election of {Holy Roman Emperor} Charles V ["the fifth"] and his war against the Schmalkaldic League.

answer: _Fugger_

C. This family was so important that the British government once guaranteed their debts to prevent bankruptcy; its members included Alexander, who negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty.

answer: _Baring_ [Alexander Baring was raised to the peerage as the 1st baron Ashburton in 1835.]
Tees-Exe Line wrote:Otherwise, I was very pleased to have a question on the Dixie Chicks. Finally good music comes up in quizbowl trash. So thanks.
You're welcome.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

Okay, thanks... obviously I was just wrong that all the answers were supposed to be Jewish.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Cheynem »

In actually seeing those trash questions, they are better than I recalled. I did not hear the last part of the Eugene Levy prompt, so that bonus is probably balanced a bit more
properly than what I was assuming. The '80s one would probably benefit from easier hard or middle parts (maybe on more decade-transcending miniseries).

I really liked the question on Reconstruction. The historiography of that period is extremely, extremely important.

Also, who knows if it's difficulty appropriate, but the tossup on All God's Chillun Got Wings justified the entire weekend.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by setht »

touchpack wrote:
bt_green_warbler wrote:
DI ICT round 5 wrote: Friedman and Telegdi saw changes in this quantity in pion decay chains. Its namesake operator has eigenvalues plus and minus one, and corresponds to reflection through the origin. This quantity's maximal violation was seen in the angular distribution of electrons from beta decay of polarized (*) cobalt-60 nuclei in an experiment led by Madame Wu. For 10 points--weak interactions do not conserve what quantity whose inversion is grouped with charge conjugation and time reversal in the CPT theorem?
Well, now I just feel kinda dumb for not recognizing the leadin, in addition to already feeling dumb for not waiting for the 3rd clue to buzz.

But anyway, yeah, I don't understand how the 2nd clue doesn't also apply to spin.
I assume you're referring to the fact that the spin operator S_z (or S_x or S_y) has eigenvalues +/- h-bar/2 for a spin-1/2 particle. I guess I could imagine a textbook or lecturer simplifying that to "eigenvalues +/- 1," but it really is h-bar/2; also, that's only for a spin-1/2 particle: a particle with greater spin would have more than two spin eigenvalues, regardless of units.

More generally, I think there's some danger in extracting part of a phrase in a tossup and analyzing it as a stand-alone clue. In this particular case, I think there's an argument to be made that "Its namesake operator has eigenvalues plus and minus one" is just the first part of a larger (uniquely identifying) clue phrase; at the moment I can't think of other sensible operators that would have eigenvalues +/- 1, but if there are some and someone negged with one of them I don't think there's much of a case to be made that they were hosed.

While I'm at it, I'll add that the phrase "In the Standard Model" makes the lepton number conservation clue correct.

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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by setht »

Cheynem wrote:The '80s one would probably benefit from easier hard or middle parts (maybe on more decade-transcending miniseries).
Wow, I was assuming your complaint was that it was too easy to get 20 on that one. I'm willing to believe the hard part was too hard, but I'm surprised at the claim that Thorn Birds and Shogun weren't sufficiently easy as an easy/medium pair.
Cheynem wrote:Also, who knows if it's difficulty appropriate, but the tossup on All God's Chillun Got Wings justified the entire weekend.
I believe this one was met with a "no one reads that" comment in my room, so I'm glad to hear someone besides me has, in fact, read it (or knows about it somehow).

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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Cheynem »

Maybe I'm way off base on the popularity of miniseries (and looking at the Shogun part, you can fraud it with history or lit knowledge I suppose). But it seemed hard to me and I like old television. I'd defer if The Thorn Birds was being converted at a normal rate.

EDIT: Apparently it was converted in other rooms, so I'll defer here.

I have not only read All God's Chillun Got Wings, but I have written a tossup on it before.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

For what it's worth I think I (!) would have pulled The Thorn Birds, and I assume Georgia Tech got it because Will told me about it a while ago. I don't know anything about trash, but it didn't seem unanswerable.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Muriel Axon »

I really liked the question on Reconstruction. The historiography of that period is extremely, extremely important.
I was excited by the inclusion of more recent scholarship, like the mention of Eric Foner and the other dude. A more boring tossup would have just described a bunch of stuff that happened during Reconstruction.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by women, fire and dangerous things »

I got The Thorn Birds, mainly from lit knowledge, but I was also aware that the miniseries was a thing, despite my general ignorance of old TV.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Fond du lac operon »

The one (DI) tossup I remember that I felt had a possibly too-easy lead in (or at least the one that the lead-in difficulty affected the outcome of a game I played) was the one on "satisfiability" -- Gordon from WUSTL and I buzzer-raced on it after "Horn" was mentioned. It's entirely plausible that we just both happened to know the clue, but I'm curious whether similar things happened in other rooms.

Also, hooray for Breaking Bad and Infinite Jest tossups!
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by marnold »

Could you post the Pennsylvania in law tossup? When I was playing that question, I heard "this state had [some random act] that prompted the leading case in regulatory takings law." If "leading" was the adjective used, that's a pretty confusing way of putting it. Obviously PA Coal is really important, but it "introduced" or "first expounded" regulatory takings law. I negged with South Carolina because I'd say the "leading" case is the one that sets the current state or final major word, and I'd say for regulatory takings that's Lucas, and it definitely isn't a case from 1922.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

DI ICT round 9 wrote:This state's enactment of the Kohler Act led to the leading Supreme Court case on regulatory takings. A law in this state giving protection to fugitive slaves was declared unconstitutional by Justice Story; that 1842 case involved a slavecatcher named Edward (*) Prigg. A 1992 case that upheld the constitutional right to an abortion involved the Planned Parenthood of part of this state and its then-governor, Robert Casey. For 10 points--name this state whose recent governors include Ed Rendell.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by firebat03 »

What is it like to be a Batman? wrote:The one (DI) tossup I remember that I felt had a possibly too-easy lead in (or at least the one that the lead-in difficulty affected the outcome of a game I played) was the one on "satisfiability" -- Gordon from WUSTL and I buzzer-raced on it after "Horn" was mentioned. It's entirely plausible that we just both happened to know the clue, but I'm curious whether similar things happened in other rooms.
We had a buzzer race on the horn clue of that tossup in my room too. Could that tossup be posted please?
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by setht »

DI ICT round 13 wrote:The Horn variant of this problem is P-complete, while the "maximum" version--an FNP generalization of it--is APX-complete. This was the first problem to which a polynomial reduction was known for ~every~ problem in NP; that result, the {Cook-Levin theorem}, made it the first problem known to be (*) {NP-complete}; it remains true even in its 3-CNF form. For 10 points--name this problem in which one must determine whether any possible set of values for variables makes a {boolean} expression true.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Tom007 »

Could the Jack Bauer tossup be posted? I wasn't listening fully at the beginning, but the lead-in seemed off somehow. But that's probably just my inattentiveness. Thanks.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

DI ICT round 11 wrote: This man has an affair with Claudia Hernandez and becomes addicted to heroin while working for the Salazars. He shoots his boss Ryan Chappelle on orders from Stephen Saunders, who worked with this man during Operation (*) Nightfall, a mission he led in Kosovo to kill Victor Drazen. He stops an outbreak of the Cordilla virus and foils an assassination attempt on President David Palmer on a show in which "events occur in real time." For 10 points--name this agent played by Kiefer Sutherland on ~24
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Papa's in the House »

Can someone post the AMT tossup?
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

DI ICT round 2 wrote:The way in which this tax calculates its "bargain element" can force {bankruptcy} upon employees who exercise stock options but don't realize the gains. A 2012 Tax Policy Center study concluded that it could not be replaced by the Buffett Rule. Because it is not indexed to (*) inflation, its exemption must be raised each year to avoid affecting too many middle-class taxpayers. For 10 points--many exclusions and deductions are disregarded by what tax that sets a floor for federal income tax?
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Papa's in the House »

bt_green_warbler wrote:
DI ICT round 2 wrote:The way in which this tax calculates its "bargain element" can force {bankruptcy} upon employees who exercise stock options but don't realize the gains. A 2012 Tax Policy Center study concluded that it could not be replaced by the Buffett Rule. Because it is not indexed to (*) inflation, its exemption must be raised each year to avoid affecting too many middle-class taxpayers. For 10 points--many exclusions and deductions are disregarded by what tax that sets a floor for federal income tax?
It's very disappointing not to see any clues about how to calculate the AMT in this question (since that's what you learn when studying this in class), though I'm sure such clues would not appeal to many non-accounting majors.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Gaterion »

Could you post the Garfield tossup?
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

DI ICT round 6 wrote:Neighbors in this comic strip include the unseen Mrs. Feeny, the often-scandalized Reba, and Reba's husband Hubert; its other characters include the odd diner waitress Irma. This strip's central man is the only remaining character in Dan Walsh's (*) "Minus" parody. Its recurring gags include the title character's jealous attempts to mail a rival to Abu Dhabi, his hatred of Mondays, and his love of lasagna. For 10 points--name this Jim Davis comic strip featuring a fat, orange cat.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Fond du lac operon »

Out of curiosity, can I see the philosophy tossup on water? I buzzed in the middle of a description of Putnam's Twin Earth, and it was still in power, which seemed a little late to me (I know, nitpicky) but also made me curious what the clues after it were.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

DI ICT round 4 wrote:An article by David Barnett imagines a warning about this substance, which turns out to be a toxic mushroom-like item. That article responds to Saul Kripke's claim that this is a "rigid designator," and to the claim that this substance could be composed of a chemical known as "XYZ" on (*) "Twin Earth," a claim made in a thought experiment designed by Hilary Putnam. For 10 points--Thales of Miletus argued that the first principle of the universe was which one of the four classical elements?
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Stained Diviner »

I was the original writer of the Alternate Minimum Tax and Violence Against Women Act questions, the latter of which was referenced in the DI thread.

With AMT, I originally had a leadin discussing the history of the tax. The first sentence was completely rewritten, while the rest of the question is basically as I wrote it. I originally thought about putting in some clues along the lines of what Charles would have wanted, but I thought they would have been transparent. I don't have his accounting knowledge, and the ideas I had were along the lines of, "This tax doesn't allow Exemptions X and Y," which I figured were bad ideas. Perhaps a better writer could have found a way to put such things in a tossup, or perhaps somebody will write a bonus for some tournament to address those issues if they feel like it.

For VAWA, I wrote a bonus that went VAWA/Murkowski/tribal courts. An editor probably determined that the last two parts were weak and rearranged the information into a tossup. I'm guessing that it played poorly because in several rooms there may have been nobody aware of the reauthorization debate, though I'm interested to know if there was some other reason. The debate has been a major issue in Congress the past few months, but if very few people are aware of it because of the amount of media coverage it has received, then it doesn't make for a good tossup.
The 2000 case of ~U.S. v. Morrison~ struck down a section of this law allowing victims to sue in federal court. It was passed in 1994, but a 2012 reauthorization contains controversial provisions making "preponderance of the evidence" the standard for university investigations and allowing tribal courts to hear cases involving non-Native Americans. (*) Stalking and sexual assault are crimes covered by--for 10 points--what act seeking to reduce gender-motivated violence that is abbreviated VAWA?
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by theMoMA »

Perhaps I have a unique take on this (I have written a legal document to keep a Mexican immigrant's children in this country based on a provision of VAWA). It's one of those things where, if you're familiar with the law, Morrison is probably the most famous thing about VAWA. So when I heard that clue, my first thought was "would there really be a question on this thing?" and my immediate next question was "and would it really start with that clue?!"
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by pray for elves »

theMoMA wrote:Perhaps I have a unique take on this (I have written a legal document to keep a Mexican immigrant's children in this country based on a provision of VAWA). It's one of those things where, if you're familiar with the law, Morrison is probably the most famous thing about VAWA. So when I heard that clue, my first thought was "would there really be a question on this thing?" and my immediate next question was "and would it really start with that clue?!"
I also thought this was a strange thing to lead with. Unlike Andrew, I haven't done work involving VAWA, but US v. Morrison is taught in most basic constitutional law classes. It's not giveaway level, but I'd say it belongs in the middle clues somewhere.
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Re: 2012 ICT: question-specific discussion

Post by Fond du lac operon »

I know nothing about VAWA, but our law-student team member buzzed on the Morrison clue too, so anecdotally it does appear to be better-known than the writers/editors maybe thought.
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