The Quizbowl Resource Center

Skepticism and Animal Feed

Well, I posted this in response to somebody saying that NAQT has no rules against, say, bringing a periodic table with you to every game, or a king list or something. I posted that because I thought it might fall under things prohibited by that rule. I did not mean to imply that writing something do...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

I'm not sure I would ever feel "My questions are likely to be thrown out or merged, so I'll write crappy questions", but perhaps I function differently from others. What I -would- think, however, is "These editors are getting thousands of questions from all across the country which th...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

NAQT has no strict rule against such things, but their rules do contain this: Any tournament official may find that a player, coach, institutional representative, or other person associated with a team during the tournament has committed misconduct. Misconduct includes disruptive behavior, unethical...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

I would not be surprised if many of them decide that getting good enough at the game simply isn't worth the time that they could spend, say, drinking. Perhaps I'm hypersensitive to it because I'm one of the few (the only?) dry person on the Midwestern circuit, but I can assure you that those two ar...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

Your case is already weak by virtue of the fact that Norse myth is not overrepresented by any stretch of the imagination, unless you consider any presence at all to be overrepresentation. Stop complaining already. You've been playing a lot longer than I have, and I conceed that my personal experien...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

There will never be a painting of Wodin Contemplating the Head of Bran inspired by Norse myth, precisely because there is no such thing in Norse myth. If you're looking for a painting featuring Odin and Mimir's head, you can buy one for $400 from http://www.stephanielaw.com/image/mimir.shtml That w...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

grapesmoker wrote: You are entitled to your wrong opinion, Mr. Hieroglyphics.

I have just one thing to say to that:

basket with handle, face, cross, owl, seated man with hand in mouth, foot, vulture, rope with three loops, basket without handle, owl, crocodile hide, loaf of bread.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

When it comes to Classical mythology (Greco-Roman), then that overrepresentation is justified because these things have a significance apart from their mere existance as myth. Classical mythology has infiltrated our own culture and our own language, and has done so throughout the West. People talk a...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

I should point out that the second part of my post was aimed not at your singles, Seth, but at quiz bowl in general. I do think that your tournament had a much more reasonable distribution than quiz bowl at large, where I think the proportion of Norse to others (excluding Classical) is far more loop...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

I understand that Norse mythology has a much bigger pool of possible questions, because everything has a name, but I still feel that it is the single most overrepresented category in quiz bowl, except perhaps for sociology/anthropology/psychiatry, but my rant about quiz bowl Social Science and its s...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

iirc, Sorice also got into a car accident on the way to the tournament. Saturday must have been an interesting day for him.

Congratulations.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

It has come to my attention a few minutes ago that some teams were never given directions to the site of the Tournament. On behalf of the Chicago college bowl club, I apologize for this rather embarassing problem, and I hope that all those who were not given this information can catch this post in t...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

For your team at IO:

Andrew = 13.69
Jerry = -34.39
Paul = -12.73

Special thanks to my Ti-83+. Unforunately, I won't be able to calculate this any further; the above is all I'm going to have time to do.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

When you think of Quizbowl Myth, you think of (or at least I do) questions on the name of the hilt of the sword (different from the sword's own name, mind you) of some obscure deity (like Borvo, Celtic god of springs). That's what I was expecting. That's not what we got at all. Instead, virtually ev...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

Not sure if there are any outstanding mirrors, so I will be as vague as I can. Generally, I enjoyed the tournament, but there was one rather glaring problem. After the first packet, there were no American history tossups for several rounds (at least four), except for two which were from the same tim...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

Last year, Div II at ACF Fall was anyone in their first or second year of playing. I have, within hearing distance of Andrew Yaphe, told this to other people this year, in such a way so as to imply that it would also be the case this year. In none of these instances did he correct me, and I hear he'...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

"He spent New Years Eve..."
Buzz: Norriega

Oh IS sets. You're so amusing to practice on.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

thanks for the input everyone, right now (based on many factors, and not taking into account distancel) this is my preference: 1) Stanford 2)Chicago 3) Florida 4) Swartmore 5) Harvard Where can I find out who is graduating etc. for these teams? I don't want to be stuck on a team full of amazing sen...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

Variance in difficulty really messes with your mind, though. I've lost way too much PPG through thinking "Nah, that will NEVER come up at this tournament, its too easy" and sitting on questions that I could have easily gotten.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

One of the more bizarre things for me was the fact that they did not read the same packets at the same time. I'm fairly certain that both DI and DII read the same packets, but not simultaneously. A packet, say, that D1 read near the beginning of the tournament, was read to DII at the end. Now, the f...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

Well, might as well bite. I'm a second-year undergrad taking the following: 1. Intro to Middle Egyptian (i.e., Ancient Egyptian from the period of Egyptian history nobody cares about) 2. Ice Age Earth Climate (the easiest thing that fulfills my physical science requirement) 3. "Power, Identity,...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

... I swallowed a piece of aluminum... A statement like that is begging for some elaboration. You know how aluminum cans have a tab, but the tab isn't attached to the actual can, its attached to this tiny semicircle that is then attached to the can. Well, when I tore the tab off my can of Pepsi, pa...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

I've actually had to leave a real game at ACF Regionals last year because I swallowed a piece of aluminum. So this thread is not that divergent from reality.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

"The pursuit of knowledge without purpose, or for the artificial purpose that quizbowl creates, is pointless/dangerous/sinful" Do expand, particularly on the last two. Well, the "pursuit of knowledge for without purpose is pointless" argument is the only one that I've actually h...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

Why Not Quiz Bowl? Answers I've heard to that: "Tournaments/practice conflict with my job" "Math/robotics/Latin/debate team is better" "Tournaments/practice conflict with basketball/baseball/fooball/volleyball" "This other activity will look better on my college a...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

If you're looking for a way to obstruct the flow of an ACF game, then I can suggest the following method. Get your worst team member to start acting unruly. Under ACF rules, that means: * Continuing to argue with a reader after a protest has been lodged. Once you have lodged a protest, shut up. It w...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

The Judge is a bit of an exception, as I think it's the only system I've ever seen with those cumbersome pedals for buzzers, but as long as every person on both teams has to do the same thing to buzz in it really shouldn't make a difference. We have a modular system that has both judge-like paddles...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

The tabletop buzzers are cumbersome to pick up and hold in your hand, and often the cables aren't long enough for you to be able to do this. That said, I don't think I've ever been disadvantaged by them. But inconvenienced? Absolutely. I think the table-top buzzers that say "Buzz In" are a...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

As far as I can tell, ACF is nothing more than a bunch of guys in their 20's who sit around, drink, and somehow pull off 3 levels of what are generally considered to be the best college tournaments around. If they can do that, what's stopping you? Granted, college teams are probably far more likely ...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

There's a lot of computational math and science in Illinois. I didn't play straight-up IHSA; I played in a local league under IHSA rules but with different questions (the Metro North League, if anyone's heard of it). Computational Math was just as important as Science, History, or Literature. Equal ...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

Rothlover wrote:Like, does anyone actually cheat at qb, or am I just being seriously naive?

When I was in high school, the word on the street was that taking speed before a tournament would make you do better. I don't know of anyone who actually did it, though.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

ACF Fall at UIUC was on the same weekend as that university's homecoming, wasn't it? I had to stay in a pretty sketchy hotel (at 3 AM I was awoken by a drunkard outside my window falling and breaking his head, along with the subsequent sounds of his friends yelling and the ambulance coming) and I he...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

As a social science major (though PolySci is woefully unrepresented in the game) with a history hobby, I would naturally vote for those. Since I'm no good at quizbowl SS, I voted history.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

50% of my team had their flight canceled coming into Chicago, so I thought it would be a pretty long day for me. Then this guy named "Dan S." was put on my team and just did a wonderful job leading us. We led the Yaphe team going into the 17th tossup but couldn't hold on, and we lost some ...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

When I moderate, that is the exact same thing I would do. I wouldn't be happy per se about doing that, but it has been my experience that when a moderator takes extensive liberties with what a correct answer is, bad things can happen. Strictly speaking, if the question said "name the so and so...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

I'm still miffed about two non-neg negs that I had this year. I bring them up because I believe they demonstrate how sometimes it's one of the poll options, and sometimes its another. One was at Illinois Open -- they didn't accept "Austro-Prussian War" for a certain 1866 war that lasted si...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

I assumed it was an English-speaking school that happened to be located in China -- perhaps catering to the children of diplomats or businessmen sent there.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

I was just reading a news story about sleep apnea that reminded me of what was probably the most spectacular neg (visually) of my career. It was my sophomore year of high school, and I had just discovered the game. At my third or fourth tournament of the year, there was a tossup of the form "wh...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

IMO, the rule should be that if the reader begins reading before the buzzer, the question must be completed. iirc, that is the NAQT requirement if one of the two teams cannot see the clock. I don't know what sort of rules NAQT has for its readers as to how they must display the clock or respond to ...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

Well, it's no different from being up 10 with 10 seconds to go on the clock when a tossup is read. You can neg at 3 seconds left and still win. Yes it is. If you're up 10 with 3 seconds left and you are 100% sure you know the answer, it is in your interest to get it correct. If there are bounceback...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

Being from Illinois, I grew up on both teams having a chance at the bonus, and it absolutely shocked me that this was not the ways things worked in college. At my first practice, I just stared there in disbelief for a few minutes after realizing it. But there's one thing that not having that rule pr...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

Just wait until I finish the Timiad.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

Hmm. Then, if I committed the cardinal sin of QB and said a first name, would they accept both Francis and Franz? If they did not accept either Francis or Franz, that is a very legitimate protest. For all we know, you were raised by rabid anti-Germans who taught you history with Anglicized names, a...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

Trevkeeper wrote:Stupid Question-Is it FRANZ Ferdinand, or FRANCIS Ferdinand? I can never remember.

Franz is German for Francis, iirc.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

I'll be taking classes at Chicago during the summer, maybe even in the same building in which this thing will be held, so it would not be out of my way at all to attend. It would also fit with my pattern of attending tournaments that I have no place being at this year. To any others my age: the only...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

I'd be curious as to the fate of Jason Mueller.

Skepticism and Animal Feed

This, I think, is part of it. I mean no disrespect to you or Chad, but as I don't know who either of you are, I'd expect in NAQT, ACF, or a modification of either, you wouldn't be able to come within five points of beating a team consisting of Andrew Yaphe and Seth Teitler. 1) Chad has been sort of...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

To approach CBI non-seriously requires an ability to discount the fact that it costs nearly $1000 to even have the chance to get to their nationals, which translates to a full year worth of circuit events. That is a lot of money for mere amusement, not to mention the sort of thing that can cripple ...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

...people were overlooking the redeeming characteristics I've seen in CBI. Which are what, exactly? There are two big ones, though they may be mutually exclusive because they require different approches. First, if you approach CBI non-seriously and listen to it with an ACF/NAQT mindset, comparing i...

Skepticism and Animal Feed

*hands up*

Ok, ok, I surrender. I phrased my post poorly. I very much do understand the question-based criticisms of CBI that are out there. My point was more that I felt that people were overlooking the redeeming characteristics I've seen in CBI.

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