Search found 26 matches

by Sargon
Wed Jul 28, 2010 8:23 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Chicago Open thanks and discussions
Replies: 126
Views: 36753

Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussions

First I would like to thank Jerry and everyone involved with tournament. The running of the tournament and the quality of moderation were exemplary barring the usual quizbowl delays. I have to agree with Marnold and some of the other posters that these questions seemed excessively difficult. I think...
by Sargon
Mon Jun 14, 2010 1:48 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Chicago Open matchmaking thread
Replies: 57
Views: 16429

Re: Chicago Open matchmaking thread

I am late getting on this but I am interested in playing and looking for a team if there are any with open slots still remaining.
Paul
by Sargon
Mon May 31, 2010 9:28 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Player Poll 2010: This is serious business
Replies: 66
Views: 16864

Re: Player Poll 2010: This is serious business

My apologies for trying to reanimate a dead forum. My career is something of a control case since I have, almost as a matter of principle, never studied for quizbowl in college but studied quite a bit in high school. I think I peaked around sophomore year of college and have been on a slow and stead...
by Sargon
Thu Mar 18, 2010 7:21 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Questions about Rewarding Knowledge (mostly in music...)
Replies: 5
Views: 2394

Re: Questions about Rewarding Knowledge (mostly in music...)

I am in principle in favor of lead-ins that include trivial or tangentially related information, if it is the sort of information you would only pick up through deep study of a given subject. For instance, Goethe fancied himself a scientist and considered his theory of color his greatest contributio...
by Sargon
Tue Jan 26, 2010 10:54 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: How long should a tournament run?
Replies: 17
Views: 5672

How long should a tournament run?

We've all been there. It' 9:30 at night, you're exhausted, having been up since 6:30, and the quizbowl tournament is somehow still not over. In fact, after a morning peppered with lopsided matches you are now probably playing the most challenging and important matches you will play that day, and all...
by Sargon
Wed Nov 25, 2009 10:14 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: RMPFest 2 Discussion Thread
Replies: 39
Views: 7712

Re: RMPFest 2 Discussion Thread

I was fairly impressed with the Christianity tossups. There were notably no glaring factual errors (something not generally true of quizbowl Christianity questions), and most did reward deep knowledge. As for the chapter and verse debate, I found at least the clue on the passage from 1 Macabbees in ...
by Sargon
Fri Nov 20, 2009 3:22 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Rewarding Different Levels of Knowledge
Replies: 102
Views: 16151

Re: Rewarding Different Levels of Knowledge

Questions rarely reward knowing about particular societies or languages, for instance, but often reward knowing about ethnography and theoretical linguistics. Paul, I really wish you would not make categorical statements like that which just aren't true. In fact, quizbowl questions have moved quite...
by Sargon
Thu Nov 19, 2009 4:01 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Rewarding Different Levels of Knowledge
Replies: 102
Views: 16151

Re: Rewarding Different Levels of Knowledge

...the emphasis on "academic importance," leads...[leads] to questions with several lines of clues that are effectively unbuzzable...[or]...choosing "academically important" answers that few people who are not graduate students in the field could legitimately have encountered. N...
by Sargon
Wed Nov 18, 2009 10:31 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Rewarding Different Levels of Knowledge
Replies: 102
Views: 16151

Re: Rewarding Different Levels of Knowledge

I also heartily agree with Bruce. In my experience, the emphasis on "academic importance," leads down one of two very unpleasant roads. First it can and has in recent years lead to questions with several lines of clues that are effectively unbuzzable, a waste of time and effort for everyon...
by Sargon
Fri Nov 06, 2009 9:02 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: How to write packets on time
Replies: 22
Views: 3413

Re: How to write packets on time

One should note there are special problems with getting the questions done early for larger programs that regularly send multiple teams (read Chicago, but I think there are others). Once the packet is written it is very difficult to redistribute people on teams. If one or two players decide not to g...
by Sargon
Fri Oct 23, 2009 10:49 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Clues that reward understanding
Replies: 44
Views: 9801

Re: Clues that reward understanding

There are several ways to stop the robot other than perpetual canon expansion, which I am convinced will slowly strangle quizbowl to death in a sea of preposterously obscure answers that perhaps a dozen people on earth find enjoyable to play on. I am not advocating either per se, but I think they wo...
by Sargon
Tue Sep 29, 2009 1:52 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: On Geography at ACF Nationals
Replies: 31
Views: 10679

Re: On Geography at ACF Nationals

I think the idea of basing our arguments for a geography distribution on some notion of what is studied in "academic geography"or that geography needs such a justification is flawed. The same arguments would remove mythology almost entirely. At least in my disciplines, mythology is not vie...
by Sargon
Mon Sep 07, 2009 12:53 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Choosing helpful clues for mythology tossups
Replies: 31
Views: 5954

Re: Choosing helpful clues for mythology tossups

I don't know Egyptian myth that well, but I think most of them have distinct cult centers at various cities. Sobek at Crocodilopolis, Re the sun god at Heliopolis, Amun at Thebes, etc (the Greek names are often based on the main god). It also makes some of the syncretism less confusing if you put in...
by Sargon
Sun Sep 06, 2009 7:22 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Choosing helpful clues for mythology tossups
Replies: 31
Views: 5954

Choosing helpful clues for mythology tossups

Given the largely justified expansion of the quizbowl mythology canon into things that are neither Norse, nor Greco-Roman, I thought it might be constructive for people with some expertise in the various "peripheral" areas to give advice on what sort of clues are useful to people who know ...
by Sargon
Sun Aug 30, 2009 8:37 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Chicago Open 2009 Discussion
Replies: 153
Views: 51871

Re: Chicago Open 2009 Discussion

Charlie's suggestion of confining 20th century music to 1/5-1/6 of the tournament seems hard to justify. A very sizeable portion, probably at least half, of the orchestral canon in most concert halls is Late Romantic or later. There may be about as many top tier composers in each era, but when you ...
by Sargon
Sun Aug 30, 2009 2:35 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Chicago Open 2009 Discussion
Replies: 153
Views: 51871

Re: Chicago Open 2009 Discussion

I think Ginastera is pretty famous, certainly on par with Villa-Lobos. Before reading this thread I would have used him as a medium part of a bonus or as a tossup answer without a second thought. Harris, Schuman, and Cowell are not tossupable, but each individually would not be bad as the hard part ...
by Sargon
Sun Aug 30, 2009 3:32 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Quizbowl: More Impossible than ACF?
Replies: 49
Views: 8641

Re: Quizbowl: More Impossible than ACF?

Most quizbowlers are playing most questions on things they will not have done serious academic work in. If you've taken history classes, you've done some academic work in that area. Obviously, a lot more of what people know just comes from outside reading, reading packets, and so on, but I don't th...
by Sargon
Wed Aug 26, 2009 9:14 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Quizbowl: More Impossible than ACF?
Replies: 49
Views: 8641

Re: Quizbowl: More Impossible than ACF?

I think the current emphasis on rewarding several years of graduate study is part of the problem. Many quizbowlers aren't graduate students in anything, and even advanced graduate students will only have that specialized knowledge in a very small area. If you happen to study modern literature this c...
by Sargon
Mon Aug 24, 2009 11:55 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Past Tournaments as the "Basis" of Quizbowl Knowledge
Replies: 52
Views: 13261

Re: Past Tournaments as the "Basis" of Quizbowl Knowledge

First, I should point out my favorite example of canon self-propagation, the Bogomils, a Bulgarian heretical group that at least one Orthodox Priest I knew had trouble coming up with, but which inexplicably came up several times in quizbowl. Central African empires are another such example; while on...
by Sargon
Thu Jul 23, 2009 7:56 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Writing Music Questions for Music Players
Replies: 122
Views: 41530

Re: Writing Music Questions for Music Players

I think a good deal of the problems people encounter when writing music tossups can be avoided by writing works on composers or, if one must, common link tossups on types of works. For me, even though I know a good bit of music theory, attempts to describe the music do not help me identify even work...
by Sargon
Sat Mar 14, 2009 5:58 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Ratio of American History to European/World History
Replies: 68
Views: 19291

Re: Ratio of American History to European/World History

If you count Assyriology as Academic history, then I would be one, but I agree there are hardly any true historian quizbowl players. I would suspect this is because history is relatively easy to pick up, whereas other subjects, particularly science and literature have a much higher barrier of entry....
by Sargon
Sat Mar 14, 2009 2:27 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Ratio of American History to European/World History
Replies: 68
Views: 19291

Re: Ratio of American History to European/World History

A 1/1 ancient history distribution at the expense of American history might not be bad. There are plenty of kings and empires, which make good tossup answers (if not the best history per say) as they are concrete things, and the answer space can be easily expanded without making people go "what...
by Sargon
Sat Mar 07, 2009 5:34 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Concept tossups in the social sciences
Replies: 40
Views: 7800

Re: Concept tossups in the social sciences

While I would like more linguisitcs, I think it does not lend itself to making good tossups. Tossups on Particular languages in general seem ill-advised. There is a very limitted number of languages about which people would know enough in principle to legitimately buzz rather than guessing. It is al...
by Sargon
Fri Mar 06, 2009 2:38 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: SCT Private Discussion Forum
Replies: 129
Views: 22722

Re: SCT Private Discussion Forum

Please let me in.
In case the name Sargon did not make it clear, this is Paul Gauthier from U Chicago.
by Sargon
Sun Jan 25, 2009 2:43 am
Forum: Best of the Best
Topic: Distribution: Origins, Motivations
Replies: 72
Views: 80426

Re: Distribution: Origins, Motivations

I think a more balanced distribution might be achieved by equalizing the amount of literature, music, and visual arts to something like 2/2 each. It is true that finding helpful clues on musical works is hard, though certainly not impossible. However, one can write very good composer given works tos...