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Skepticism and Animal Feed

I'll start this post off with a disclaimer: I have never competed in CBI at any level higher than the Chicago Intramural Tournament (where the team I was on came within 5 points of beating a team consisting of Andrew Yaphe and Seth Teitler, thanks to Chad), though I have practiced on CBI questions t...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

Gnolem for Golem at practice yesterday. I think I confused Golem and Gnome, and thus buzzed in with their unholy joint spawn.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

zwtipp wrote:Fundamental Orders of Connecticutt for Aleutians

That is possibly the most awesome neg ever. It has made my day. Thank you.

I'm curious as to what prompted it, however. Something about trees?

Skepticism and Animal Feed

Yeah, you're right Bruce...what I'm saying is that, especially with NAQT, I prefer to play with the "law of large numbers". I'm not indicting the format as a whole; I don't believe that it necessarily prevents a better team from winning. I just think that two games is a dangerously low nu...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

I think that, in general, if you insist that the two top teams play a final in NAQT at all costs - even if you give the one that's ahead a one-game advantage - the probability goes up that the title will be awarded to the less-deserving team in the end. If you argue that a game under NAQT rules and...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

In my brief time being aware of tournaments that I did not go to (which is less than a year), I have found that, typically, you can get the basic results and final standings from players who were there. My problem has always been with stats. I'd like to see those posted like within the week, during ...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

I'd certainly call Manu harder. I mean, Manu did not have a bonus on the first man from the mythology of Madagascar, but the tossups at ACF Nationals were a lot more accessible, at least to me. One thing I found sort of cool were the common theme questions (crowns, spiders, etc.) They do require the...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

In a few weeks I will be handed free airplane tickets to another part of the country, one where it is significantly warmer than it is in Chicago. And why? To play a game. A game that ultimately boils down to glorified trivia. If you know anyone who is suicidal, tell them to join a quiz bowl team. Th...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

Somebody had a lot of free time in 1998.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

It seems ridiculous that a team would get its difficulty level guessed at a tournament by its name alone. Just seems like you're setting yourself up for that sort of manipulation. Are high school tournaments really that large that you can't have an "equal" schedule? Are players so obscure ...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

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Skepticism and Animal Feed

Is Michigan B not D2? I'm surprised. Will Turner and Co. would probably run away with the D2 title rather easily.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

My old high school (Roycemore in Evanston) finally won its first regional tonight, a former teammate tells me. What wonders being moved out of Latin's region do for you!

Skepticism and Animal Feed

I don't believe that Chicago B will be eligible for UG, as that team now contains David Press.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

One thing I did notice was that the editors were very good about not repeating answers. In fact, they were too good, to the extent that you could use process of elimination to correctly guess things just by what was asked in that category before. I got the first non-music arts tossup of my life late...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

Due to Andrew Yaphe's "second house team splits into two teams for playoff round" rule, I can now honestly say that I was on a team that went undefeated at ACF Regionals. That would be your Midwest lower bracket champion, Chicago C.

Take that, Mr. Mueller.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

How disapointing. That post wasn't nearly as pathetic as some of the other ones reposted or alluded to here.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

Is going down something the yahoo group does occasionally, or is this perhaps something that could last a while?

I'd feel terrible if I didn't get to read the post alluded to in the first post.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

HAHAHA wrote:Yes. There were maybe four literature questions the entire time, no fine arts questions, and instead categories such as cartography.

!!!!!!

You have found my personal heaven. Please return it.

Man, I can't believe I missed out on this in high school.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

zwtipp wrote:Tito for Tojo
My brain fart of the day

Better than the Toto for Tojo I once did.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

I personally would like to see an end to the bonus of the format "Given a Canadian University, name the province in which is it located". I mean, talk about a total giveaway to Canadian teams. Since they are college students, I bet a good many of them got intimately familiar with Canadian ...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

I suppose nobody cares enough for D2 to do the same for it?

Skepticism and Animal Feed

[quote="Matt Weiner"]
â€œCeltic languagesâ€

Skepticism and Animal Feed

MikeWormdog wrote: Also, whenever there's a "this, that, both, or neither" question, it'll probably suck. There seemed to be a bunch of them this time around.

There were some precious, precious bonuses like that in D2.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

Speaking of over-represented,

Pretty to look at, not pretty to hear dozens of questions about within the space of a month.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

I don't recall ever hearing a bonus on male reproductive organs. In high school, I heard a tossup on the prostate, but that was it. As for the females, in high school, I saw a bonus about the female reproductive system and another bonus about the menstrual cycle. In college, I've only heard bonuses ...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

as for mythology: I never understood why it wasn't a subset of literature. You could argue that mythology, while often written down, also has a very significant social and historical dimension that literature doesn't. I mean, nobody built temples to Dostoyevsky. Nobody conquered land in his name. N...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

I googled and found some sample questions: Art & Culture 1 - In which century did Arizona, New Mexico & Oklahoma become states of the USA ? A: 20th (1912, 1912 & 1907) 2 - People found to be speaking which language were persecuted in Japan, Germany & Russia during the 1930s ? A: Espe...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

5) Again, something I was always too lazy to do, but try to get hooked up with other organizations in other, subtle ways. This can be mentioning QB to random people in other clubs, or helping with some kind of bowl at another club. At UVA, we let the Black Student Union borrow our buzzers for a Bla...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

If I went by just what I hear at practice, I'd think that there were only four rivers in the world, and that five of them were the Brahmaputra.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

as a player, i find that when i miss something in my category, i frequently look back and remember the questions i miss and try to get them if they ever come up again at a later tournament I half-jokingly renamed my Hard Drive "Von Moltke" after I came up blank on tossups about him twice ...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

Please don't say "Illinois Quiz Bowl" unless you are refering to a program at the University of Illinois.

At the high school level, it is SCHOLASTIC BOWL.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

(in Illinois, it is perfectly normal for coaches to split duties in moderating during a match). That's one thing that I had serious issues with during my high school career in Illinois, especially since I played only in a local league with no moderators. Lots of coaches had thick accents, and this ...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

From a theoretical standpoint, increasing rewards for early correct answers while decreasing punishments for incorrect answers should do the trick. Of course, if you whatever format you play in tournaments has negative pointage for incorrect answers, that approach could backfire as, faced with the h...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

Matt Weiner wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_watermelon 522 words

Can anyone say "tossup"?

Skepticism and Animal Feed

I was pretty good in high school, but, alas, I never played outside something in Chicago called the "Metro North League", so I don't have anything to measure myself against. There was a guy named "Nick" from Latin that was pretty good too. Since Latin plays in things that people ...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

i am the one that committed the neg. during the whole question they were talking about the speech. i do not know why i felt it necessary to blitz. even if i didn't fuck it up, the subsequent bonus was on japanese novels. i could not think of one to save my life so get off my back. 'Sup; actually, I...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

I have found the "random page" option to be somewhat useful when I cannot think of a topic to write on.

If you make sure to double-check anything you get off there, I don't see the harm.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

ACF Fall at Illinois was my first college-level tournament ever, so I can speak for it and it alone, but only the top three in D1 and D2 were mentioned and "decorated".

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