Are the excavations at Herculaneum substantially more important than those at Pompeii? Those seem quite easy to confuse with one another and I'm wondering if there's a particularly good reason to ask for one of them rather than the other.Ike wrote:Herculaneum
Can you post this question? It seemed like half of it was basically about Klausewitz's literary or theological output, which doesn't strike me as particularly important in any way.Klausewitz
There have been entire discussions before on how people should pick answers. Time and time again, we have come to the conclusion that quizbowl often represents academically overlooked works, or works that are not taught in a classroom setting. You assert that some of my questions (to take three examples, Golding, Alcott, and Dostoevsky) focused on works that are not as frequently read as other works which I could have written on. The issue here is that I intended to explore the other works of these authors, because they are so well known that teams will get them by the end.1- The main issue is that you wrote questions on things someone could have read at this level rather than writing on things people probably have read. I think this policy should be adopted for all tournaments, but I can understand the disagreement with that for higher level tournaments; however, I think you must have this mentality while writing regular difficulty.
Not that it matters, but the story is called "White Nights." Dostoevsky is a giant of Russian literature, if not just literature. What you're saying amounts to "ask about these four works of Dostoevsky and nothing else," which I'm in complete disagreement with. Dostoevsky wrote several short stories, all of which are moving, entertaining, and interesting from a literary standpoint, and there is no coherent clarion call for me to not write on them, other than maybe a lingering thought in my mind that "maybe a Dostoevsky purist might not agree with my choice of works here." In retrospect, this tossup ended up harder than I intended it to. I should have added a clue or two more about Notes from the Underground, which is actually more widely read than you give it credit for, and then the tossup would be that much better. But your argument of "these are the four Dostoevsky novels that I was assigned in class" fails to hold up when it's been adequately established that a large chunk of quizbowl learning takes place outside the classroom, whatever the classroom may be.This issue is exemplified by the Dostoevsky issue. For VCU Open you wrote a tossup on Poor Folk and for this regular difficulty tournament you wrote a tossup on Dostoevsky only using clues from his minor shorter works that are not usually taught in classes devoted to Dostoevsky. If I was approaching either of these tournaments I would try to think what are works I'm pretty sure people have actually read and I want to reward that knowledge. But you ask is this Dostoevsky work "important" in that case I will ask it because a "hypothetical reader of important works" could have read it. You claims that you are trying to cater to your audience, but if that is true (which I sincerely doubt) this is only a surface dedication. But wouldn't it cater to your audience more if you wrote a tossup on Ivan or Dmitri that it is relatively likely that someone on Louisville B has knowledge about than a tossup primarily on "Winter Nights"? Do you not see a distinction in importance between "Winter Nights" and The Brothers Karamazov?
So you think that me citing several of my well-thought-out, knowledge-awarding bonuses is a total cop out? Well, fuck you. If you actually had the good sense to look at my bonus choices, you would see that a large part of my innovation and selection of easy topics rests there, but I guess bonuses take no effort and it's only the tossups that determine the quality of a subject.Lets look at what you said was important: "east of eden, golding, milton, a streetcar named desire, howards end, flaubert, fall of the house of usher, ancient greek and roman comedians, woolf, robinson, confessions of an english opium eater, gilman, hoffman, sidney, dostoevsky, satanic verses, alcott, holmes, coleridge, antigone." First of all, I only care about the tossups because writing good tossups on easy material is difficult (and is where you individually need to improve), while writing bonuses on easy subjects is simple and is often used as a way to cover up less than desirable tossups choices.
Lets look at round three: the answers are Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Puig, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and Hoffman. Now to defended these answer choices you used the same misguided logic I discussed above: in theory someone could have read or been assigned these works. But thats not the important question. The better question would be: is it likely that someone would have been assigned these works? You betray your own defense with the very choice of Gilman as an answer. I could have respected that you were writing on something you felt people knew about if you had written on "The Yellow Wall-Paper", while I despise that story, I respect that it is something that unfortunately is important. But by writing on Gilman it shows that you are not really interested in what people read, but more about improving as a player. The same goes for Confessions of an English Opium Eater. It is conceivable that someone might be assigned that throughout their academic career (I'm discarding the possibility that many people would read that book for leisure), but is it likely? It is very likely that any English or literature major will be assigned a Jane Austen novel or Middlemarch at some point in their career and that is the criteria I would use.
There are a total of seven clues here about Gilman's far and away most widely read works, Herland and "The Yellow Wallpaper." Before that, I included a clue about Gilman's poetry and a clue about the prequel to Herland. I'm sorry, but what exactly am I missing here? Is me including two or three clues about some not-too-well-known works indicative of me not really caring about the works that people who have read Gilman actually do know? For the record, you are right that I wrote that question to improve my personal knowledge of Gilman. That also happens to be largely irrelevant. I posit that you, Ted Gioia, me, and every other quizbowler who has ever written quizbowl questions has written them to include clues that they previously did not know, such that they might increase the scope of their own knowledge of those subjects. You are accusing me of doing something that literally every quizbowl player does. You're accusing me of solely being interested in improving myself, whereas the existence of tossups on Dracula, The Last of the Mohicans, Cyrano de Bergerac, and bonuses on Asimov and Alice in Wonderland are contrary to that; do you think the rest of the tournaments of this semester are going to play out overlooked parts of high school reading lists? Don't attempt to divine my thought processes and go by what you actually see on the page.11. One poem by this author urges a preacher to preach about tomorrow and yesterday instead of today; another features an “ignominious idiot” who doesn’t “want to be a fly, I want to be a worm!” This author wrote the poetry collection In This Our World and a novel about John Robertson, who returns from Tibet to an America “beyond socialism.” In her sequel to Moving the Mountain, this author wrote about a society that reveres the Conscious Makers of People, which include Ellador, Celis, and Alima, who undergo (*) parthenogenesis and marry three visiting men. The Forerunner contains her story about Jane, who hides her journal entries from her husband John during a “rest cure,” which involves her discovery of claw marks behind the “sickly sulfur tint” in her room. For 10 points, identify this feminist American author who wrote Herland and “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
ANSWER: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
No, my defense of this tournament approaches importance as a stupid and unreliable metric for selecting questions. My metric for writing these questions was "how many people can be expected to convert this bonus part" or "what percent of the field can answer this tossup by the giveaway, and what percent can reasonably get it pre-FTP?" To that end, I wholeheartedly reject a prescriptivist canon of any kind dictating what should and shouldn't come up, and I could honestly tell you that "which of George Eliot and DeQuincey is more important" is the wrong question to be asking when approaching quizbowl questions. The fact of the matter is that they both wrote works that people know about, and I could just as easily have written a tossup on The Mill on the Floss, which I have never read or written about, but this time, I was in a DeQuincey mood. If you follow this line of reasoning, Ted, then you have to criticize every writer ever who has picked a reasonably well-known topic in lieu of another reasonably well-known topic, and such an argument would largely be incoherent.2- This pushes me to my next point. Your defense of the tournament approaches importance with an "either-or" mentality. Either it is important enough to be written about or it is not. I have a question for you Auroni, is this actually how you view importance? Or do you see distinctions in levels of importance? Even in high school when I wasn't studying literature but just knew everything I got questions about through plot summaries, I still was able to implicitly feel that George Eliot was more important than Thomas De Quincey. Part of the problem with THUNDER's literature was that there were a lot of questions on the 3-4 level out of 5 on the difficulty scale.
You read me the wrong way there. I mentioned that I was not a student of literature because I don't know the nuances of the Western Canon, but I do know enough about it to know that you're egging for a metric of importance that is concomitant with it. I can agree with you that Confessions of an English Opium Eater is not as likely to be assigned as works by Austen and Eliot, but I have already shown that quizbowl learning largely takes place out of the classroom. Point me to an intellectually curious individual who has read up on literature and doesn't know DeQuincey but does know the works of George Eliot intimately and we'll be getting somewhere.Now Auroni you seemed to imply that I was belittling you for "not being a student of actual literature", but I'm asking you frankly: do you feel that it is too much of a responsibility to expect you to know that Austen and Eliot are objectively more important and more likely to be assigned and read than Confessions of an English Opium Eater? If that is too big a leap than I apologize.
Again, you think that I've written things that are personally most interesting to me. What you fail to realize is that I have linked those things to answer lines that I know people will be able to answer questions on. The question on Gilman which you're so fond of has the following clues about "The Yellow Wallpaper" in it: "The Forerunner contains her story about Jane, who hides her journal entries from her husband John during a “rest cure,” which involves her discovery of claw marks behind the “sickly sulfur tint” in her room." There are four clues about it here arranged in roughly descending order of memorability. If some random dude who has just read "The Yellow Wallpaper" can beat you to a tossup on Gilman because he's read it recently, well, tough shit, but he remembered a clue that you should have known better than you.3- I think the third major problem with is that you write about things primarily to improve as a player and not to produce the best possible tournament. I don't doubt you are capable of writing an excellent Middlemarch question but it seems that you are more interested in writing about things that could potentially come up in harder tournaments. I've discussed with Jonathan and Eric individually before how there is a point in the maturation of a quizbowl writer that you're comfortable writing tossups in which you knew all the clues beforehand. I'm not saying you always have to write about the same thing as you imply when you claimed that I am demanding that you write on Middlemarch rather than Confessions of an English Opium Eater. I would be happy with any substantive tossup on something like Middlemarch, Jane Austen, Ulysses, Mrs. Dalloway, Vanity Fair, or whatever. But frankly you will produce better tournaments when you write your questions to reward what the people at the tournament are likely to have read rather than writing on whats most interesting for you. And by writing to reward the people at the tournament I don't mean Jerry, or me, or Matt Bollinger, but to reward the players from Random College B who read the typical slew of canonical works. I'm not trying to be self-serving here, but actually open up regular difficulty tournaments so I miss that question on "The Yellow Wall-Paper" to a player who has read it recently rather than beating someone to a tossup on Charlotte Perkins Gilman based on secondary knowledge.
In retrospect, I think that that Alcott question shouldn't have been intended to explore her minor works. I will grant that that was a bad tossup. Your other criticisms here are incoherent. As Jerry pointed out, the leadin clue from Flaubert was from A Sentimental Education, a work that's read and studied and isn't by any means Flaubert's only read work. It also used a clue from "A Simple Heart," another story by Flaubert that's widely read. If you knew things about those two works, then chances are that you powered that question. I probably could have included an easier clue from Madame Bovary earlier instead of that clue on Bouvard and Pecuchet, but I disagree that the Evan Adams model of "pick harder clues from easier works to use as leadin clues" is necessarily the only correct way to approach author tossups.4- I apologize for dismissively critiquing the Borges question. It was a good question and was a question that I enjoyed. I failed to explain kindly my point. I feel like you default to writing the easier version of a question too often. This default to easier to find material particularly plagues your questions on easier authors, which kind of defeats the point of writing about easier authors in the first place. Let me explain. Rather than writing The Crime and Punishment tossup you choose to write on Dostoevsky using minor clues. Rather than writing a good tossup on Milton or Shakespeare drawing from their poetry (or a Sidney tossup drawing from his poetry which people actually read in depth) you wrote a tossup on Sidney drawing mainly from his plays. Rather than writing on Madame Bovary you wrote on Flaubert from lesser known sources weren't even summarize effectively. Rather than writing on an important 19th century American writer whose short fiction people read in depth (like Kate Chopin, Melville, etc), you chose to write about Louisa May Alcott drawing from her short stories, posthumously published novel, and titles from Hospital Sketches, which I cant imagine are things that are frequently studied. Rather than writing on a Borges story I felt that you defaulted to writing to a quick tossup that drew on plot summaries. (On a side note it is hilarious you thought I was criticizing you for not including Borges' poetry when I wanted exactly the opposite.) Rather than spending the time to find a good leadin for The Seagull you defaulted to giving us: "One character in this play justifies a love affair by reminding the audience that in his youth, he was preoccupied by making a name for himself rather than finding love."
Every literature question was written before the three days leading up to the tournament. Between September and then, I had meticulously written every literature question. I stand by all my leadin choices, including the movie leadin ones. The Woman in the Dunes movie actually won either Cannes or Palme d'Or the very year that the novel of the same title was released, so I decided "why the fuck not" when selecting a clue from the opening montage of that movie to serve as the leadin to that tossup. I decided to elaborate on a difference between the movie adaptation of The Name of the Rose, a not particularly obscure film by any means, and the novel, to yield a Name of the Rose leadin. Was it "lazy?" Maybe. After all, I didn't read a ton of the works that I wrote on, simply because I am a slow reader and I couldn't possibly hope to write questions and read everything before the tournament ran. There are some people in quizbowl, such as Jonathan Magin, whose default activity is to read and who consequently can read every book that they toss up. I think that that's exemplary if Magin and if you can do it, Ted, but I am not one of those people.I apologize for using the word lazy, but what I meant to say is that I consistently felt you chose to write on the easiest possible versions of easy answer rather than spending the amount of time necessary to make sure you had a well balanced and clue dense set. The tournament would have turned out better if you asked for help with one of your sub-distributions so you could focus on each individual answer more because I think the time crunch led you to default to quick and easy leadins (like The Seagull leadin, the couple of movie adaption leadins, or to a lesser degree The East of Eden leadins) rather than finding the best possible leadins. It takes more time and effort to do the research to write a good tossup on Madame Bovary than a question on Flaubert written from summaries. I would encourage Auroni to spend more time looking for substantial clues from the most important works in the canon rather than focusing his energy on finding quick summaries of largely unread William Golding novels.
I mean, now you're trying to say that only poets and poems that people read for fun should come up. Forget the Essay on Criticisms and The Rime of the Ancient Marinerss of the world. Every single one of those works that you cited are studied academically and read by intellectually curious people interested in academic poetry. Your other point tells me that you don't like tossups on the translated poetry of major world authors because English-speaking authors don't read them. The latter is, in fact, a tragedy of the availability of good translations coupled with the well-known fact that Americans nowadays don't read poetry. In fact, Americans largely don't come in contact with the major cultural and historical products that quizbowl asks about, so there's really nothing separating translated poems by Leopardi, Pushkin, Holderlin, or whoever else from other works of literature that the general body of readers should be reading instead of the newest novels by Stieg Larsson or Stephanie Meyer.5- I think the issue of defaulting to easy answers is related to genre in your writing. I've felt that your writing always veered too much towards fiction and suffered from a dearth of drama and poetry tossups. Moreover, when you do write poetry and drama tossups I always felt the questions avoided the more canonical subjects about things people read. Let me illustrate by looking at the poetry tossup answers Auroni wrote for this tournament and for VCU Open. THUNDER had five (six if you count Pushkin) poetry tossups in the games I played: Sidney, Horace, Essay on Criticism, Lovelace, Pushkin, and "Italian." You need to stop and course correct. Auroni's poetry tossups for VCU Open were: Robinson Jeffers, Martial, Redcrosse Knight, Szymborska, Chretian de Troyes, Holderlin, "Burnt Norton", The Temple, "Fable for Critics", "John Brown's Body." Many of these were good tossups, the tossup on the Redcrosse Knight was especially well done and exemplary of the direction I think Auroni should take more often in his writing. But most of these seem a little off to me. I talked with Kevin Koai after VCU Open about how some of the poetry just seemed weird about stuff such as "A Fable for Critics" or "John Brown's Body" that just aren't interesting to people who read poetry for fun, and I had a similar conversation with Dallas on the way back from THUNDER. It seems weird that there are so many questions on fringe topics. It is not like anyone is going to critique you for using the wrong Szymborska quotes or quoting the wrong lines from Leopardi in a the "italian" tossup. Please don't make the argument that I'm saying people like Holderlin or Pushkin are unimportant, but frankly the corpus of their poetry is not really read frequently by English speakers. It just seems odd that there weren't tossups on any of the Romantics or Modernists or most of the major poets at all in THUNDER. If I was writing a tournament you get to make your own ideal distribution and I would hesitate writing that Lovelace tossup thinking to myself, "I haven't written on any of the major poetry movements yet and have only written one tossup on a work. Maybe I should write about something I know people are likely to have read like Keats, Stevens, Milton, Neruda, Frost or anything."
Okay, so that Horace question was unfortunate and didn't reward the knowledge of the people that I wrote it for. That's unfortunate, because I had no way of knowing what the most studied Horatian odes were, so I picked three that I was able to find good translations for." That tossup also had, quite early in the question, two important points to take away from Ars Poetica, which I'm pretty sure you can agree that readers of Horace have read.Perhaps I'm reading too much into this, but I feel that Auroni defaults to writing on poems and plays that people are less likely to have read rather than spending the time to write the good question on very canonical answers. I think it is telling that the worst moments of the set were on the easiest questions. For example during the tossup on Horace, Dallas wasn't able to buzz even after "Odes" was read because he was sure it couldn't be Horace's odes because none of the earlier clues came from the important Horace odes. On a similar note, I find it difficult to imagine that Auroni really feels that Corneille and Eugene O'Neill/T. Williams are really on an equal level of notoriety to an American audience. Once again this goes back to the central principle that it would reward what people are likely to have read to have a question on Streetcar or Iceman Cometh rather than a tossup on Le Cid. I would encourage Auroni to consider writing about the major figures and works in drama and poetry, and not to relegate them to bonuses. If anything it makes much more sense to have bonuses on Sidney or Le Cid and tossups on Streetcar and Milton. I hope this critique gave more constructive criticism than my earlier catty response. I'll offer some individual examples of vagueness and less than optimal clue selection, which I think especially affects the poetry and drama questions, later today or tonight.
Aha! Well, now I'm doubly sorry about that.ThisIsMyUsername wrote:Sorry, Rob; that's not how to read opus notation. This piece is his Op. 11, No. 5, which means it's the fifth work in the set that was published as his eleventh opus. He earlier published six string quintets in his Op. 10. So it's the fifth string quintet from his second set of quintets, and his first set had six, so it is therefore his eleventh string quintet.Ukonvasara wrote:Near as I can tell, it's his fifth String Quintet, which is his Op. 11; the "Cello Concerto" part in the bonus part I wrote was an unfortunate typo. Sorry about that!ThisIsMyUsername wrote:Factual inaccuracy from the minuet common-link: Boccherini's Minuet in A is from his eleventh String Quintet. Minnesota Open claimed it was from his fifth Cello Concerto
Hurculaneum is interesting in its own right, but mostly because it wasn't looted as heavily in the 18th century as Pompeii and because of the skeletal remains found there (the casting process used at Pompeii made all those skeletons unavailable for study). I don't recall if the question touched on either thing.grapesmoker wrote:Are the excavations at Herculaneum substantially more important than those at Pompeii? Those seem quite easy to confuse with one another and I'm wondering if there's a particularly good reason to ask for one of them rather than the other.Ike wrote:Herculaneum
I realize that I'm picking out a relatively small part of your post, but I think it's central to a disagreement we're having. Really, that quote is "central to understanding Trigorin's motivations"? What basis do you have for saying that? Moreover, why do you think that Ted, despite having read this book and written a tossup (or more) on it, doesn't deserve to buzz on the first line of your tossup on it because he doesn't recall that one quote? Again, think of what percentage of your field has read the Seagull. It's going to be pretty small. I posit that, unless you're asking about a book that a very hefty percentage of your field has read, anyone who has read that book should be able to easily get your lead-in. Even setting aside the idea that that one quote is crucial to an understanding of the play, which I don't see much support for, I don't think there's much point in intentionally taking away early buzzes from people who have read a given work, but haven't "internalized" it as well as you would like.I gave you a splendid buzz on it if you could internalize the plot enough to realize that this bit of paraphrased dialogue is central to understanding Trigorin's motivations for some of his actions in the play. If it seems "vague" to you, then you don't have the level of knowledge about the play to buzz there anyway.
I don't know how the whole tossup looked, but Edvard Benes and Klement Gottwald aren't particularly Czech names. I buzzed because I knew the clues, not because I frauded it. Also, boo on that question for mentioning Bohumil Hrabal's tenth most famous work instead of his fifth most famous work. Perhaps it got fraudable soon after (quite frankly, I'm not sure if that's avoidable), but at least the first couple of lines were good.ThisIsMyUsername wrote:The only tossup outside my categories that I remember being bothered by was the tossup on Defenestrations of Prague, which was a giant game of chicken, since it started dropping Czech names by the second line, making it abundantly clear that it was looking for some kind of event that happened multiple times in Czech history.
Dude, get over it. It's one quote in a tossup that had lots of other clues in it.Cernel Joson wrote:I realize that I'm picking out a relatively small part of your post, but I think it's central to a disagreement we're having. Really, that quote is "central to understanding Trigorin's motivations"? What basis do you have for saying that?
Why do you think he does deserve it? What's this with the "deserving" anyway? So you don't remember that quote, you don't buzz there; this is normal quizbowl people! If the rest of the tossup affords you plenty of opportunities to demonstrate your awesome knowledge of The Seagull you will still beat those of us who haven't read it.Moreover, why do you think that Ted, despite having read this book and written a tossup (or more) on it, doesn't deserve to buzz on the first line of your tossup on it because he doesn't recall that one quote?
You posit wrong. There's no obvious reason why that should be so. It would be clearly problematic if an entire tossup was composed out of obscure quotes but since this wasn't the case, I don't see anything wrong with it.Again, think of what percentage of your field has read the Seagull. It's going to be pretty small. I posit that, unless you're asking about a book that a very hefty percentage of your field has read, anyone who has read that book should be able to easily get your lead-in.
It's called "writing pyramidal questions." All it means is that whatever early clue Auroni chose was not the same early clue that another player knew; there is nothing wrong with that, so stop arguing as though there were.Even setting aside the idea that that one quote is crucial to an understanding of the play, which I don't see much support for, I don't think there's much point in intentionally taking away early buzzes from people who have read a given work, but haven't "internalized" it as well as you would like.
....That said, I think it's very difficult to write gettable lead-ins for dramatic works, especially works by Chekov, where not that much really happens outside of dialogue. This was one of the handful of works asked that I happened to have read, so I managed to get it around the third or fourth line, which actually seems reasonable.
I feel silly arguing with you on this subject, since you obviously know languages far better than I, but Benes is actually a pretty common Czech surname. (Googling it, I find that it is the 16th most popular Czech last name; roughly 1 out of every 400 Czech people have this last name). It is in fact the Czech form of the name Bennett in English or Benet in French. That clue alone is maybe not that fraudable (especially since I bet many moderators pronounced it like it's Spanish), but the next clue was about Saint Wenceslas, noted patron saint of the Czech, still in power, and there are more than five lines more of the question after that.Sir Thopas wrote: I don't know how the whole tossup looked, but Edvard Benes and Klement Gottwald aren't particularly Czech names. I buzzed because I knew the clues, not because I frauded it. Also, boo on that question for mentioning Bohumil Hrabal's tenth most famous work instead of his fifth most famous work. Perhaps it got fraudable soon after (quite frankly, I'm not sure if that's avoidable), but at least the first couple of lines were good.
FAE - I liked this tossup, mostly because it is an answer line often unasked about.Ike wrote: Here you go.
Since I'm pretty weak at economics in relation to most other subcategories of SS I admit they may be not optimal. I fully appreciate any critique anyone can give. I'm also curious as to what people thought of me trying to include some non-traditional SS in this distro. Please, comment on that as well! I'll post all the answers here:
fundamental attribution error
iron law of wages
pleading no contest
contract / boilerplate / Pound
I don't mean to pick a fight or anything; I'm just amused that you would have linguistic frauded that. I'd always assumed as a child that Andy Benes was Hispanic (like Darrell in that episode of Seinfeld does Elaine), and Edvard and Klement certainly don't scream Czech to me in the way that, say, František and Bedřich do. If I hadn't just spent a semester reading excerpts on Czech history from 1945 to 1948 (!), I wouldn't have gotten it there.ThisIsMyUsername wrote:I feel silly arguing with you on this subject, since you obviously know languages far better than I, but Benes is actually a pretty common Czech surname. (Googling it, I find that it is the 16th most popular Czech last name; roughly 1 out of every 400 Czech people have this last name). It is in fact the Czech form of the name Bennett in English or Benet in French. That clue alone is maybe not that fraudable (especially since I bet many moderators pronounced it like it's Spanish), but the next clue was about Saint Wenceslas, noted patron saint of the Czech, still in power, and there are more than five lines more of the question after that.Sir Thopas wrote: I don't know how the whole tossup looked, but Edvard Benes and Klement Gottwald aren't particularly Czech names. I buzzed because I knew the clues, not because I frauded it. Also, boo on that question for mentioning Bohumil Hrabal's tenth most famous work instead of his fifth most famous work. Perhaps it got fraudable soon after (quite frankly, I'm not sure if that's avoidable), but at least the first couple of lines were good.
I know it often seems like it when you first write on something you think is cute and/or clever, but in fact common-links of Prague defenestrations have been around for probably about as long as there have been tossups. And they've always been a really poor idea. Which is to say I basically agree with what Guy is saying here.Sir Thopas wrote: I do agree with you that Wenceslas was probably a poor choice and, at the risk of focussing on one question too much, I'd avoid writing college common-link tossups on Defenestrations of Prague just because you can usually figure them out pretty quickly. Maybe future questions on the topic can just be on the first or the second instead.
The first clue is true of production, utility, and a million other things. Cobb Douglas functions themselves can be log transformed into log-concave functions, so it doesn't do anything to describe the answer line.I don't understand the second sentence at all (perhaps it's attempting to describe the von Neumann-Morgenstern Utility functions and risk-aversion, but I'm not sure.) The Edgeworth box doesn't plot utility, but rather, sets of allocations of two different people, onto which utility curves can be imposed. If I hadn't buzzed in by that point, I'd probably have said "endowments."Ike wrote:Applying the Cobb-Douglass equation to this economic concept can be done to easily solve the Fisher Equilibrium problem by transforming it into an equivalent homogenous degree 1 log-concave function. Von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern proposed four axioms such as completeness and transitivity that govern the rationality people exist that is necessary to account for while calculating this economic quantity. One way of graphically illustrating this quantity with respect to two resources was illustrated in Francis Edgeworth’s Mathematical Psychics, and involves plotting various combinations of various quantities of two (*) resources for two party’s consumption. Indifference curves are graphic representations depicting various quantities of goods that, for a particular consumer, will keep this quantity constant. For 10 points, name this economic measure of satisfaction.
ANSWER: (economic) utility
I'm sorry about this. FYI, I was trying to write about the so described utilty functions by describing the axioms needed to apply them then just describing the variables in one.gkandlikar wrote:The first clue is true of production, utility, and a million other things. Cobb Douglas functions themselves can be log transformed into log-concave functions, so it doesn't do anything to describe the answer line.I don't understand the second sentence at all (perhaps it's attempting to describe the von Neumann-Morgenstern Utility functions and risk-aversion, but I'm not sure.) The Edgeworth box doesn't plot utility, but rather, sets of allocations of two different people, onto which utility curves can be imposed. If I hadn't buzzed in by that point, I'd probably have said "endowments."Ike wrote:Applying the Cobb-Douglass equation to this economic concept can be done to easily solve the Fisher Equilibrium problem by transforming it into an equivalent homogenous degree 1 log-concave function. Von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern proposed four axioms such as completeness and transitivity that govern the rationality people exist that is necessary to account for while calculating this economic quantity. One way of graphically illustrating this quantity with respect to two resources was illustrated in Francis Edgeworth’s Mathematical Psychics, and involves plotting various combinations of various quantities of two (*) resources for two party’s consumption. Indifference curves are graphic representations depicting various quantities of goods that, for a particular consumer, will keep this quantity constant. For 10 points, name this economic measure of satisfaction.
ANSWER: (economic) utility
I liked the opera tossups that I remember hearing, particularly the one on Mozart. Despite it being a while back, I felt rewarded for having seen Lucia di Lammermoor and Cosi Fan Tutte in person, and I think somebody with deeper knowledge of their plots or a fresher experience of seeing them performed could have easily buzzed before me.every time i refresh i have a new name wrote:For people who like religion/opera/ballet, I am curious to hear how my questions were.
I don't really understand this so-called dichotomy at all. Or rather, I understand that it can and does exist at some level (e.g. asking for doubly-eponymous things in science that virtually no one outside of quizbowl knows) but I don't agree that this set was an instantiation of it. None of the examples in Matt's post are really examples of something that people would necessarily know just from playing quizbowl; indeed, Wide Sargasso Sea appears quite often in many literature curricula, and Dostoyevsky and Puig are not exactly obscurata.RyuAqua wrote:It seems like there’s an essential tension in question writing at Regionals level and higher, and that it hasn’t been addressed directly here. The tension probably comes out most clearly in lit, though it really applies to tossups involving any works longer than a page or so that people read:
On one side, people seem to write tossups which primarily highlights things that “quizbowl players,” however recursively defined – are likely to know by virtue of playing quizbowl as a source of exposure. (Examples in this set might include Wide Sargasso Sea, the Dostoevsky tossup, and the Puig tossup.)
It is bizarre to suggest that Course in General Linguistics is the kind of thing that an intellectually curious person might know, or which is assigned in many classes, in opposition to Dostoyevsky. That just makes no sense! I'm going to put the likelihood of someone reading Course at barely larger than epsilon; while it certainly is a foundational work, I would be surprised if anyone actually read it, or if more than a few excerpts were assigned in college classes. The reason it comes up has everything to do with its intellectual importance as a foundational work of linguistics, and very, very little to do with how many people might have actually read it. Indeed, I would suggest that the Course is the paradigmatic example of something one might know purely from quizbowl and nowhere else; reference to Dostoyevsky abound in the intellectual milieu, while references to Saussure (Magnetic Fields songs aside) are rather more scarce.On the other side, there are tossups that reward in-depth reading of things that people who have never played quizbowl before are most likely to have read well (i.e. things which “intellectually-curious people”, however recursively defined, are likely to know, things which are assigned in many classes across the country, foundational texts, etc.). Examples in this set might include that East of Eden tossup, and the Course in General Linguistics tossup.
I was not assigned either of those works in any class, and yet I have read them and got points for doing so. I don't really understand what sort of "balance" this is supposed to signify, or how these things are really in conflict. To me it seems like there are a lot of valid choices that can be answer lines and there are certainly lots of valid ways to know things about those answers that have nothing to do with committing Masterplots to memory. Criticizing a writer for choosing to write about one rather than another of those things is a complete non-starter.I totally recognize that these types of reward overlap substantially in actual experience – there is going to be someone, somewhere, who was assigned The Woman in the Dunes or Betrayed by Rita Hayworth for a class, and conversely there are many someones who memorize something about their actual plots to get tasty points - and that it’s totally possible (perhaps necessary) to strike a numerical balance between these writing styles over the course of a multipacket set, rather than picking one or the other as a binary choice. In my opinion, though, the set did indeed strike a balance, resulting in the former type of tossup perceptibly more often than the latter, though Auroni did indeed produce many tossups of both kinds.
I just want to be clear that I make no assertions whatsoever regarding this particular Pushkin question. I only remember it insofar as I recognized some of the character names, waited for an extra few clues, and buzzed. It may well not have been particularly good or have used clues that were less than useful. I have no idea where the clues used for that question came from.Magister Ludi wrote:It turns out that both the Pushkin and "Italian" poetry question (which I actually thought was successful) drew largely on this blog's translations as well. The Pushkin question also largely relies on the random poems this grad student decided to translate. Now Jerry, I hope you understand my logic behind the comment about Pushkin questions. It's not that I dont think good questions on Pushkin's lyric poetry are possible, but rather that he is notoriously difficult to translate into English and often leads writers especially at lower levels to rely on weird sources that make them difficult to buzz on even for people with real knowledge. I would hope that Pushkin questions for regular difficulty would focus more on his longer poems rather than relying mainly on quotes from potentially unreliable (and certainly rarely read) translations of his lyric poems.
Ok, I think that's fine. I don't really know Auroni's style and I honestly don't remember what went down at VCU Open, so I'll just take your word for it. If I were writing questions for this set, I would probably have included more Anglophone poetry in it, but that might well be just as much a function of the kinds of things I read as this set was of the kinds of things Auroni read or was interested in. In general, I don't think these kinds of things are unique to Auroni or really anyone else.Now Jerry let me explain another aspect of my reasoning. I think I've illustrated that the a few of the poetry and drama questions were among the weakest in the set. However, one of the set's best questions in the set was the Much Ado About Nothing, which unsurprisingly Auroni had read. Now I want to say to Jerry that I was not arguing that Auroni has to write on Anglophone writers, but I was encouraging him and all writers to consider writing about someone like Emily Dickinson or Pablo Neruda in which there is a better sense of what poems are really important if one is unsure about what Horace or Mallarme poems are really well known. I'm not saying that Auroni has to write on any subject, but looking at his answer selection for poetry and drama tossups for this tournament and for VCU Open there seems to be some sense of avoiding the Anglophone tradition of poetry and drama and especially the mainstream figure heads of that tradition. To repeat I'm not saying he has to write on any of those people. But I'd suggest that maybe some of the minor problems with vague or unimportant clues that sometimes creep there way into his questions (and especially his non-English language poetry) might fix themselves if he considered writing on a few more of those topics. It's well-established what the famous Emily Dickinson poems are in a way someone without deep knowledge of an area might not be as certain in discerning the the third and fourth best known poems of Holderlin. Don't get me wrong Jerry I hope to see lots of great tossups on Holderlin.
I have to again disagree with you regarding the assertion that these questions were "frustrating to play on if you had strong primary source knowledge." I personally earned a good number of powers and many more regular tossups on this set based on things I had read. I'm happy to provide a list of such answer choices in literature if you want, but I hope you'll take my word for it that I got a lot of buzzes on things that I'd read. I felt that the majority of the time, the questions really did reward me for having primary knowledge of the texts. I concede that it may not have been uniform throughout (I know very little about Horace, for example) but at least in those areas where I felt my knowledge was very good, I thought the questions were written well.I hope the logic behind my critique is more apparent now. The reason I gave a frank critique of what I felt was Auroni's question writing philosophy is because it is directly related to some recurring problems in his work. To be clear, I think Auroni is a good writer and the literature in this set was fine. I'm perfectly fine if he never decides to listen to any of my comments about his answer selection. But these questions were often frustrating to play on if you had strong primary source knowledge, which could easily be fixed by addressing a few technical problems through a greater use of source materials and less reliance on shoddy secondary sources (especially for finding leadins). Unsurprisingly some of the weaker questions in the set came in poetry and drama, which require more textual research. As evidence of the good Much Ado question I would encourage Auroni to re-evaluate some of his research methods and consider using more primary sources. I know that takes a long time and I'm sure Auroni put a lot of effort into this set, but I think it is the step he needs to take to elevate his questions from good to great.
It is bizarre to suggest that Course in General Linguistics is the kind of thing that an intellectually curious person might know, or which is assigned in many classes, in opposition to Dostoyevsky. That just makes no sense! I'm going to put the likelihood of someone reading Course at barely larger than epsilon; while it certainly is a foundational work, I would be surprised if anyone actually read it, or if more than a few excerpts were assigned in college classes. The reason it comes up has everything to do with its intellectual importance as a foundational work of linguistics, and very, very little to do with how many people might have actually read it. Indeed, I would suggest that the Course is the paradigmatic example of something one might know purely from quizbowl and nowhere else; reference to Dostoyevsky abound in the intellectual milieu, while references to Saussure (Magnetic Fields songs aside) are rather more scarce. [/quote]On the other side, there are tossups that reward in-depth reading of things that people who have never played quizbowl before are most likely to have read well (i.e. things which “intellectually-curious people”, however recursively defined, are likely to know, things which are assigned in many classes across the country, foundational texts, etc.). Examples in this set might include that East of Eden tossup, and the Course in General Linguistics tossup.
I'm glad you enjoyed the Mozart question, however I used clues from Clemenza di Tito, Idomeneo, Don Giovanni, and The Marriage of Figaro in it.Dutton Speedwords wrote:I liked the opera tossups that I remember hearing, particularly the one on Mozart. Despite it being a while back, I felt rewarded for having seen Lucia di Lammermoor and Cosi Fan Tutte in person, and I think somebody with deeper knowledge of their plots or a fresher experience of seeing them performed could have easily buzzed before me.every time i refresh i have a new name wrote:For people who like religion/opera/ballet, I am curious to hear how my questions were.
I didn't want to comment anymore about this, but I think I need to address these issues. I'm not saying you can't write questions to improve, but what I'm saying is that it can become a problem if it interferes with your editing. Your defense of the Dostoevsky tossup is particularly problematic and strikes me as an example of what I mean when I said your interest in improving has a negative effect on your questions. I'm not saying that you have to write questions on the Dostoevsky books I've read, and by no means am I saying that Dostoevsky's short stories like "Winter Nights" should never be asked about. I would be happy if this tossup appeared at ACF Nationals or there were questions on The Gambler or The Double. I share your enthusiasm for his lesser known works. You seem to think I was doubting them based on their literary merit, when rather what I questioned was whether this regular difficulty tournament was the right venue to explore these lesser known works. Moreover, it seems doubly problematic that the Dostoevsky question didn't mention any of the canonical works other than Notes from the Underground even after "FTP." I think is a case where you let your desire to improve as a player infringe on your editorial judgment. Frankly, I find it a bit troublesome that you continue to defend this obviously inappropriate tossup. Also, you've now written tossups on Poor Folk and the short stories of Dostoevsky for your last two tournaments, so I'm eagerly awaiting the time when you decide that his better known works might merit an occasional question.every time i refresh i have a new name wrote:
Not that it matters, but the story is called "White Nights." Dostoevsky is a giant of Russian literature, if not just literature. What you're saying amounts to "ask about these four works of Dostoevsky and nothing else," which I'm in complete disagreement with. Dostoevsky wrote several short stories, all of which are moving, entertaining, and interesting from a literary standpoint, and there is no coherent clarion call for me to not write on them, other than maybe a lingering thought in my mind that "maybe a Dostoevsky purist might not agree with my choice of works here." In retrospect, this tossup ended up harder than I intended it to. I should have added a clue or two more about Notes from the Underground, which is actually more widely read than you give it credit for, and then the tossup would be that much better. But your argument of "these are the four Dostoevsky novels that I was assigned in class" fails to hold up when it's been adequately established that a large chunk of quizbowl learning takes place outside the classroom, whatever the classroom may be.
There are a total of seven clues here about Gilman's far and away most widely read works, Herland and "The Yellow Wallpaper." Before that, I included a clue about Gilman's poetry and a clue about the prequel to Herland. I'm sorry, but what exactly am I missing here? Is me including two or three clues about some not-too-well-known works indicative of me not really caring about the works that people who have read Gilman actually do know? For the record, you are right that I wrote that question to improve my personal knowledge of Gilman. That also happens to be largely irrelevant. I posit that you, Ted Gioia, me, and every other quizbowler who has ever written quizbowl questions has written them to include clues that they previously did not know, such that they might increase the scope of their own knowledge of those subjects. You are accusing me of doing something that literally every quizbowl player does. You're accusing me of solely being interested in improving myself, whereas the existence of tossups on Dracula, The Last of the Mohicans, Cyrano de Bergerac, and bonuses on Asimov and Alice in Wonderland are contrary to that; do you think the rest of the tournaments of this semester are going to play out overlooked parts of high school reading lists? Don't attempt to divine my thought processes and go by what you actually see on the page.
I agree with this 300 percent.grapesmoker wrote:All of which is to say that I think there's a great amount of diversity possible when writing questions and that as long as the rules of good writing are observed, we don't need to shy away from exploring various aspects of a writer's works.
Could you post the text of the Pushkin tossup?every time i refresh i have a new name wrote:Two more question-specific things:
I know that Pushkin wrote lyric poetry that a large number of Russians, if not people, know quite well. I probably should have kept it to just one of those, but the rest of the tossup was solidly spent on Eugene Onegin and "The Bronze Horseman." Again, it's near impossible to know whether or not one of these things is random or not, but I did a quick search showing that the poems in the first third of the tossup were indeed translated elsewhere, and so I thought that someone might know them.
That's what I get for watching Cosi and Figaro back-to-back. Guess it's time to brush up with a 22-opera Mozart marathon after finals are over!every time i refresh i have a new name wrote:I'm glad you enjoyed the Mozart question, however I used clues from Clemenza di Tito, Idomeneo, Don Giovanni, and The Marriage of Figaro in it.Dutton Speedwords wrote:I liked the opera tossups that I remember hearing, particularly the one on Mozart. Despite it being a while back, I felt rewarded for having seen Lucia di Lammermoor and Cosi Fan Tutte in person, and I think somebody with deeper knowledge of their plots or a fresher experience of seeing them performed could have easily buzzed before me.every time i refresh i have a new name wrote:For people who like religion/opera/ballet, I am curious to hear how my questions were.
This one was on me. I felt like if I just described it as a period, it would make it way too obvious it was a period of Chinese history in which a bunch of states fought each other. In my defense, Chris said he powered it on the description of Lord Shang.Mike B wrote:Describing the Warring States period as a conflict for most of the question was pretty confusing.
There was 21/21 of each, but some of them may have been relegated to tiebreakers.Mike B wrote:What was the final count of audio fine arts questions to visual fine arts questions in this set? I kind of felt it was more skewed toward audio questions than visual questions, but I could be remembering wrong.
I don't believe so. They're distinct entities.Libo wrote: Also for curiosity's sake, was waves acceptable for the TU on currents?
He's named Joseph; I believe the question was trying to say that his half-brother shared his surname.Libo wrote:Also, the question on Chamberlain had a clue that was something like: "his half-brother of the same name signed the locarno treaties," which made me very confused as I didn't think Chamberlain's brother was also named Neville, but that may be my own error.
You've picked literally the easiest science bonus and the hardest literature bonus, so keep in mind you're looking at outliers. But I'd like to defend that science bonus; I'm not sure that many non-science players would be able to get a bonus part on Faraday's constant without some kind of indication that its named for Faraday. Furthermore, electroplating is something that I've not heard come up in quizbowl (although that could be a faulty memory), so I don't think it'll be converted by teams that don't have general chemistry knowledge.Libo wrote:I felt a bigger problem with this set was having large bonus variations. A bonus of electroplating/nernst equation/faraday's constant, all giving some of the more obvious clues for those things, is just not comparable in difficulty to a bonus of women warrior/kingston/hwang.
The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:I don't believe so. They're distinct entities.Libo wrote: Also for curiosity's sake, was waves acceptable for the TU on currents?
Rgarding the faraday bonus, didn't the part on faraday mention induction, whic is very much associated with faraday?The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:You've picked literally the easiest science bonus and the hardest literature bonus, so keep in mind you're looking at outliers. But I'd like to defend that science bonus; I'm not sure that many non-science players would be able to get a bonus part on Faraday's constant without some kind of indication that its named for Faraday. Furthermore, electroplating is something that I've not heard come up in quizbowl (although that could be a faulty memory), so I don't think it'll be converted by teams that don't have general chemistry knowledge.Libo wrote:I felt a bigger problem with this set was having large bonus variations. A bonus of electroplating/nernst equation/faraday's constant, all giving some of the more obvious clues for those things, is just not comparable in difficulty to a bonus of women warrior/kingston/hwang.
This is part of a trend in quizbowl (especially history) that needs to stop. If you can't write a tossup on something because it's transparent, just don't write it. Changing your question so that your pronoun is incorrect is just obnoxious. I recall there being at least one example of this at Minnesota Open that suffered from the same problem, although the specific answer line escapes me.The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:This one was on me. I felt like if I just described it as a period, it would make it way too obvious it was a period of Chinese history in which a bunch of states fought each other. In my defense, Chris said he powered it on the description of Lord Shang.Mike B wrote:Describing the Warring States period as a conflict for most of the question was pretty confusing.
Sieges are battles!Cheynem wrote:I generally agree with this. The only tossup I remember getting direct criticism in that vein at MO was the much-discussed Siege of Sevastopol question, in which someone told me that calling it a battle, not a siege, was confusing. If there were other such confusing pronouns, please let me know.
Sometimes answer lines don't lend themselves to very good tossups. That's when I suggest moving them to the bonuses if you really must use that answer.This is part of a trend in quizbowl (especially history) that needs to stop. If you can't write a tossup on something because it's transparent, just don't write it. Changing your question so that your pronoun is incorrect is just obnoxious. I recall there being at least one example of this at Minnesota Open that suffered from the same problem, although the specific answer line escapes me.
I agree with this to some extent, but I really don't have a problem with it in this situation. I guess it's unfortunate if someone figures out "this is a conflict during the warring states period, now I have to figure out what it's called...", but it's pretty clear to me that there was a historical conflict, so I think it's fine to ask about it by calling it "this conflict."Bentley Like Beckham wrote:This is part of a trend in quizbowl (especially history) that needs to stop. If you can't write a tossup on something because it's transparent, just don't write it. Changing your question so that your pronoun is incorrect is just obnoxious. I recall there being at least one example of this at Minnesota Open that suffered from the same problem, although the specific answer line escapes me.The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:This one was on me. I felt like if I just described it as a period, it would make it way too obvious it was a period of Chinese history in which a bunch of states fought each other. In my defense, Chris said he powered it on the description of Lord Shang.Mike B wrote:Describing the Warring States period as a conflict for most of the question was pretty confusing.
The problem with this arises in cases like Sevastopol where the siege is a prolonged campaign which in fact contains many distinct battles. For example, I've always learned (though this might not be the standard interpretation, I'm by no means an expert on the Crimean War) that Balaclava, as an attempt to break the siege, would be considered part of the overall "Siege of Sevastopol" campaign.grapesmoker wrote:Sieges are battles!Cheynem wrote:I generally agree with this. The only tossup I remember getting direct criticism in that vein at MO was the much-discussed Siege of Sevastopol question, in which someone told me that calling it a battle, not a siege, was confusing. If there were other such confusing pronouns, please let me know.
Fair enough. I probably should have gone with "campaign" in hindsight.Pilgrim wrote: The problem with this arises in cases like Sevastopol where the siege is a prolonged campaign which in fact contains many distinct battles. For example, I've always learned (though this might not be the standard interpretation, I'm by no means an expert on the Crimean War) that Balaclava, as an attempt to break the siege, would be considered part of the overall "Siege of Sevastopol" campaign.
That's exactly what happened to me as I was like o.o a tossup on a battle/conflict during the warring states.Pilgrim wrote:I agree with this to some extent, but I really don't have a problem with it in this situation. I guess it's unfortunate if someone figures out "this is a conflict during the warring states period, now I have to figure out what it's called...", but it's pretty clear to me that there was a historical conflict, so I think it's fine to ask about it by calling it "this conflict."Bentley Like Beckham wrote:This is part of a trend in quizbowl (especially history) that needs to stop. If you can't write a tossup on something because it's transparent, just don't write it. Changing your question so that your pronoun is incorrect is just obnoxious. I recall there being at least one example of this at Minnesota Open that suffered from the same problem, although the specific answer line escapes me.The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:This one was on me. I felt like if I just described it as a period, it would make it way too obvious it was a period of Chinese history in which a bunch of states fought each other. In my defense, Chris said he powered it on the description of Lord Shang.Mike B wrote:Describing the Warring States period as a conflict for most of the question was pretty confusing.
That was in jest. Sorry if that wasn't clear.Magister Ludi wrote:Also I want to address Jerry's notion that I'm setting myself up as the "literature mafia."
My feeling about this discussion is that it started out a little too personal. I'm not saying that Auroni is above criticism or whatever, but I think you were, and still are, making somewhat unwarranted extrapolations from some basically harmless things that Auroni has said to his ability as a writer, and pinning the deficient questions on his character. I think he's a decent writer who has put in a fair amount of work into the tournaments he's been part of, and clearly not someone who operates in bad faith or that his approach is fundamentally unsound, so I don't think we need to go beyond "these questions are flawed and here's why," to "these questions are flawed because of your character." Sorry for that meta aside.I try to reserve my comments for when I see a problematic trend. I commented in this thread because I felt that I've seen a recurring issue in Auroni's work with not using the best sources which leads to occasional vagueness and bad clues, and non-ideal answer selection. He can chose to listen to my critique or not, but I'm not going to yell at him next tournament if he does the same thing.
The problem I have with the above is that you rhetorically position me in opposition to "what will make for the best tournament," and I refuse to be characterized in this way. I'm not convinced (ok, I flat out don't believe) that there's any such thing as "the best tournament," something which I think should be clear from everything I've said before. Rather, I believe that there can be a multiplicity of good tournaments, each good in their own way. I recognize that a tournament edited by another editor would look different from the tournament I edit, and I'm fine with that; what I'm not fine is being painted as some kind of indulgent despot who subordinates quality to his personal idiosyncracies; while I certainly do have an agenda when I edit (as does everyone) I do what I do because I think that it will, in fact, produce a better tournament.I got into a flame war with Jerry in the CO 2010 thread because I felt that he chooses to write about what he finds interesting and new rather than what will make for the best tournament.
That's because "important," really is a nebulous word, a point I've been making for a while now. You want to say, "here are the things that are really important, and all this other stuff is just the periphery," whereas I don't view that distinction as particularly crucial or interesting. What we view as important is in many cases very strongly contingent on all sorts of factors that really have very little to do with any notion of "intrinsic" importance. As such, I see the notion of a "core canon," as instrumentally useful but also confining; at least part of what interests me about quizbowl is the opportunity to explore a wide and diverse range of topics, whether that's going to be in literature, history, the social sciences, or the hard sciences. I believe that there's entirely too much interesting stuff out there to be constantly rehashing the same subjects.I think that higher levels tournaments and especially ACF Nationals (which he is editing this year) need to have a certain commitment to having a decent number of tossups about subjects that are in the core canon of that discipline's academic tradition and just writing about things that are "important" under the most nebulous sense of the word which I think can be used to justify any tossup answer.
Well, I appreciate the sentiment, and I too will say that I consider Ted a good friend and an excellent writer/collaborator to boot. Our differences on this subject are probably more complicated than can be captured in a debate about quizbowl, but as I've said above, it's not that I don't think a de facto canon exists, it's just that I think that whatever is in that canon by no means exhausts the space of interesting and relevant answer choices.Obviously we don't agree on this point and Jerry doesn't even believe a core literary canon exists. Don't get me wrong, I love Jerry and he is a good friend, but we just don't see eye-to-eye on this issue.
I'm not convinced that this is true, because so far all I've seen is a few questions that were poorly written, but essentially well-conceived. What that tells me is not that there's a philosophical problem somewhere but merely that the execution wasn't up to par. Well, that happens, and we can talk about how we can improve that, but I don't think that "not writing tossups on Pushkin," (sorry to harp on that) or "write tossups on Madame Bovary instead of on Flaubert," is a reasonable solution to these problems.And often, as in Auroni's case for THUNDER, I think adopting a writing philosophy somewhat closer to the values that I espouse will help improve these problems.
What I object to in this critique is that I feel you smuggle in personal preferences about what you'd like to see in packets under the guise of objectivity. It's fine to have preferences; I have them too, and if someone wrote a tournament that catered to my tastes, I'd be thrilled, but I don't pretend that that's the only legitimate tournament that can exist. On the other hand, I feel like too often you are trying to delegitimize others' writing by attacking it on the basis on failing to adhere to a weird canonicity criterion that you've actually never really articulated very well. My response continues to be: there are multiple acceptable realizations of a good quizbowl tournaments. That your realization may or may not be appealing to me from some kind of aesthetic standpoint (or vice versa) is not, in my view, an argument for or against it, so I tend to view these disputes as generally useless when it comes to resolving the practical issues of producing good tournaments. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to fully convince you of this, but that's my position.That doesn't mean anyone has to listen to my critique or change how they write, as I'm sure Jerry has no plans in changing his writing, but I'm going to continue to offer constructive criticism when I see a recurring problem even if that critique may be seen as overly dogmatic.
