Bloggin' about you-know-what

[Matt Weiner]

Here is how you "qualify" for NAC:

1) Do you have $600?
2) Do you have no sense of shame?

Congratulations!

[The Falcon Flock]

Basically, what I was objecting to was the implication (I perceived) that "this is just some team wants to claim is the state champions even though they aren't." That's the purpose behind my post. I'd be the first to join in criticizing the NAC (if there weren't such a huge amount of that going on already to the point where I'd just be repeating everyone else). I would just request that the teams and schools involved are left out of it. It's not as if there aren't decent teams competing in a format we all agree is flawed: I just don't want anything taken away from them for that reason.

[Rococo A Go Go]

Whatever happened with the interview I heard about possibly taking place?

[mlaird]

Whatever happened with the interview I heard about possibly taking place?

It happened. Transcribing is a pretty sucky process, but I'll have it done tomorrow. I'll post the interview as an mp3 then too, but it'll be pretty crappy quality, since I used an old mini-tape recorder, then transferred it to my pc by way of the mic on my headset.

EDIT: given the new name of AHAN Jr. I'll guess that my interview has already made its way around. Here's the link then: don't go crazy and eat up all our bandwidth. If someone could mirror it, that'd be cool beans. http://aegisquestions.com/matt/chipinterview.mp3

Double edit: You can now see the fully transcribed interview here: http://www.doc-ent.com/qbwiki/index.php ... Chip_Beall

[AlphaQuizBowler]

We're second to none in question quality.

[harpersferry]

Matt, I was wondering if you just didn't have information handy about specific incidents to ask him about or whether you didn't want to push him any harder (or both)?

[mlaird]

Matt, I was wondering if you just didn't have information handy about specific incidents to ask him about or whether you didn't want to push him any harder (or both)?

It was both. I was pretty confident I wouldn't get a straight answer to that question (a fact which was just confirmed by further email conversation with Chip), so I decided I'd best move on. I know I didn't get straight answers to the two hard questions that I asked, but I still feel like there were important things that were said, and that the whole ordeal was worthwhile.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

I enjoy how Matt Weiner predicted Chip's response to the plagiarism question to a t.

[jonpin]

Okay, the only post that seems to do something vaguely like what you suggest is the below. But, uh, where's the suggestion that you're not the state champion? This dude said he won "the NJ state tourny that qualified [a team to NAC]" (according to the organizers). He's not attacking you, and I don't see why he has to have won non-terrible tournaments to be able to say on the boards that NAC is terrible. In fact, I'll say straight up that he does not, in fact, have to win a good-quizbowl tournament before he is allowed to criticize the quality of the NAC on these boards!

The champs of the NJ state tourny that qualified one for this was actually us, JP Stevens. In fact, the fact that we automatically qualified and the BRITE (the tourny) people were paying for our entrance fee were pretty much the reasons for us going. Of course, if said otherwise, it wouldn't surprise me.

http://www.b-rea.org/brite.htm

Before we go completely off the rails, before the part of Nasen's post that you quoted, Nasen himself quoted JacKGlerum saying "It's St. Josephs (NJ State champs apparently) vs. Zionsville A".

The implication that Falcon took from Nasen's post was that "No, St Joseph's is not NJ State champs apparently, but the champs of the NJ state tourney... was actually us, JP Stevens."

IMO, St. Joseph's is the only team with a solid claim to be the state champions. Of the three tournaments I'm aware of that claim to award a "state championship", they won the only one on good questions (NAQT), finished runner-up in another buzzer-based though bad competition (Cablevision's TV tournament), and finished top-four in the barely-if-at-all-quizbowl BRITE.

[mlaird]

In case you aren't in the habit of reading old, edited posts, here's a link to the full transcription of my interview with Chip, which includes a link to the audio at the top.

http://www.doc-ent.com/qbwiki/index.php ... Chip_Beall

[Nine-Tenths Ideas]

Gosh, the transcription doesn't capture the tone of the interview at all. Listening to it, it sounds a lot more contentious, somewhat awkward. It reads a lot friendlier.