The Quizbowl Resource Center

jmarvin_

I hate to say this on such short notice, but something has come up such that I am looking for someone willing to staff this in my place - please let me know if you'd be willing and able!

jmarvin_

Milhouse wrote: ↑
Sat Mar 02, 2019 2:38 pm
To be perfectly clear, it is Toronto who is out of line here.

* Toronto J, not to be confused with the official UToronto club

jmarvin_

I negged with USA when they dropped Argonauts of the Western Pacific because of Malinowski's association with Columbia, only to immediately hear "before he moved to the US." It might have been better to reverse those clauses, in which case the answer would have been unambiguous to those who can't re...

jmarvin_

I had a lot of fun playing this set. As with anything, there were some nits that could be picked, but they were seldom. I appreciated the difficulty control and enjoyed getting some really obscure knowledge rewarded by pretty simple answerlines. My team agreed that there seemed like an overabundance...

jmarvin_

From what I could gather, Harry White reported that Matt said that I know a fair number of TRASH people read this weblog, as do NAQT folk. . Is there any evidence of this being valid? Another point that Harry raised was I know that Dwight has linked to his blog (and presumably read it) ... is there...

jmarvin_

There are two hypotheses for why Matt Bruce remains an NAQT member at the moment. The first hypothesis is that NAQT does not care or understand why these blog posts are a problem. The second hypothesis is that NAQT intends to remove Matt Bruce but can't do it at instant speed - perhaps they need to...

jmarvin_

Mike and Alston display great restraint and grace in stating things so calmly. I am far from alone in being outraged that such an openly disgusting individual—whose brazenly well-documented predilections for underaged women were well-known to at least Dwight Kidder—has remained unquestioned in NAQT ...

jmarvin_

This year's ACF Nats should really be all anyone needs to see that ACF "Division II" is not a very useful category in its present state (congrats to Harvard B!). Having a second division could afford the opportunity to give novice players something to compete for, to give room for success to underpo...

jmarvin_

I would like to sing the praises of this tournament's editors; though I did not play it, this was probably the coolest quizbowl set I saw played in my entire undergraduate career, with the most impressive balance of cool-ness, real-ness, and gettability that I've encountered, at least with respect t...

jmarvin_

I wanted to note that, right now, the poll seems to be dead split between "no ACF powers at all" and "powers at all levels of ACF." According to the thread right now, what I'm reading is that most people are of the opinion that the attempt to add powers is mainly a "proxy" campaign for newer player...

jmarvin_

I think it's worth taking a moment to consider the response to Charles's post, which has been quite positive, but which I am willing to wager is received as it was because of a confirmation bias of sorts. Obviously, I believe Charles: he has worked hard to develop a team and speaks clearly and confi...

jmarvin_

I realized a big flaw with my last post on this topic, namely that it had no poll, and the only way to voice one's opinion was verbally and publicly. So, now I'm taking this opportunity to ask: should ACF start using powers? I have left five options, based on the opinions raised in the last discussi...

jmarvin_

real serious mathematically supported predictions: even after the tournament has run its course, nobody is sure whether Berkeley is better than the top east coast / midwest teams OSU loses a game it really shouldnt have because of negs archaeology tossup on turkey another archaeology tossup, not abo...

jmarvin_

A Jacques Derrida book about a certain virtue closes by comparing the story of this place with a similar episode on the hill of Ephraim in Judges. Stories of this place, such as people being mutilated to fit uniformly-sized beds and a girl being executed by a swarm of bees for helping a beggar, are...

jmarvin_

I've also heard that some people don't like neg prizes, but I'm ambivalent about those, they can sometimes be too meme-y / political, but other times seem to have been received very humorously. I've always thought conditional neg prizes were a reasonable and fun thing to have, ie. if the player wit...

jmarvin_

My main purpose in wading into this thread was just, I see, given actual life in Sameer's post. What I was going to say in slightly longer form, and will now say in brief, is that people should not assume that their own feelings about powers are somehow imputed to other "new players," just as I sho...

jmarvin_

The only problem is, more people are playing pyramidal quiz bowl these days than ten years ago, so given a single tournament, question difficulty might never find a happy medium between an upper echelon of more familiar and studious teams and the vast majority of everyone else. Personally, I think ...

jmarvin_

I think it's high time we reconsider the purist structure of ACF rules and acknowledge the many benefits of power marking for player experience, especially for new players. Many will recall moments where a novice player from their club came out of a hard tournament with a good experience because of ...

jmarvin_

Assuming no big surprises, I'll be at Chicago for the next two to (ideally, up to) ten years, and I plan to play the whole time. I'm hoping to transition to my true calling as a fourth-scoring religion/philosophy/jazz/literature-that-I've-read/architecture specialist and quit acting as generalist-by...

jmarvin_

I'm in American Studies, not sociology, but yes they are important and worth-knowing. Glad to hear it; thanks for responding! Another thing on the already-too-long reading list. So I want to clarify that my original post focused on the perceived difficulty of the Bukowski/Sherman packet (Northweste...

jmarvin_

It's somewhat late, but here are my thoughts on the set: 1) Shoutouts to whichever player or editor read my post on religion and then wrote Talal Asad into the Geertz question. Asad's critique of Geertz is probably more academically relevant than Geertz's own work at this point, to stretch trends so...

jmarvin_

no sibling of 'mountain "cracker barrel" laurel' kirk-davidoff would ever be caught dead signing their life away to the Empire Maintenance Organization that is the US military

but in any case, i really resonate with those statlines

jmarvin_

For the "Eastern Orthodox" tossup, prompting on specific patriarchates doesn't seem like the right thing to do. If you're not going to accept one patriarchate outright, you should probably anti-prompt, as e.g. "Greek Orthodoxy" is a specific subset of Eastern Orthodoxy. Yeah, the tossup was pretty ...

jmarvin_

As with many critiques of this sort, some (though certainly not all!) of it can be attributed to relatively narrow personal experience, since Karl Barth comes up all the dang time . Altizer I admit I've never previously heard of, though Death of God theology came up as recently as Crime. Thanks for...

jmarvin_

Also, I don't mean to be rude, but could you use capital letters? my shift key is broken But seriously, I apologize if I've caused anyone's eyes undue stress. I was in one of those post-tournament "still thinking about quizbowl" moods and decided to finally get this post I'd had on the backburner f...

jmarvin_

People with academic credentials in specific fields often ask that we test for knowledge of current academic scholarship in those fields. Usually I'm very skeptical that anyone interested in the subject outside the confines of academia would or should care about that scholarship. Is there any parti...

jmarvin_

EDIT: my intended title, "the FIRST BLAST of the TRUMPET against the Monstrous Regimen of Religion Distribution Problems" was too long, so you'll have to settle for the above this post has been brewing and stewing for almost five years now, and as i’m entering the last year in my quest for my first ...

jmarvin_

perhaps this is really just faulting myself for not playing optimally, or presuming that some pieces of information are more widely-known than they actually are, but there were a few questions where a clue which i thought was too obvious to be placed early convinced me that the tossup couldn't possi...

jmarvin_

wheres the theology

...but seriously:

The Stately Rhododendron wrote:fun!

jmarvin_

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:...some Tibetan river that I suspect almost nobody converted (I bet almost nobody at ACF Nationals would know the latter thing either, for what it's worth)...

Perhaps it merits mention, in defense of it and its large canyon, that Corry Wang knew the Yarlung Tsangpo.

jmarvin_

Could I see the tossup on 'magi'?

jmarvin_

I can affirm that putting smoldering so early for combustion was an oversight. I am bad at science and was able to get that tossup early without much knowledge, and did so not even convinced of my answer (since, because it was so early, I had half a mind to think "smoldering" must be some technical ...

jmarvin_

Brandeis, Northeastern, and Wellesley all have teams that show up to things around once a year.

jmarvin_

Since I'll be living in Boston for most of the summer, I thought it'd be worth seeing if there's sufficient interest to have summer practices in the area like in Chicago or Maryland. Between Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, myself, any students returning home to the Boston area, and perhaps even precocio...

jmarvin_

Could I see the tossup on "students?" My teammate buzzed in on the first clue with "members of the White Rose movement," and ended up marking the answer for protest (with MIT A's support, I believe), and it may be worth editing the answerline to accept at that point, depending on what the question a...

jmarvin_

This was mistakenly posted here, and was actually intended to go in the specific questions thread.

jmarvin_

What we WERE objecting to was Kenneth's ideas that somehow quizbowl puts up "barriers to entry," making it nigh impossible for people to even play tournaments without a great deal of effort. This is not true. It certainly wasn't true for Boston College, which has played at least recently ACF Fall a...

jmarvin_

As someone attempting the "team-building" thing right now, I can attest to its difficulty; even at a school wherein most are quite affluent it's difficult to get people out to events, and even more difficult to retain them. The trouble is usually less "getting people to spend 20$ and their Saturday"...

jmarvin_

The tossup was almost certainly too hard, even for this set (How many people actually know what happens in that book well enough to even power that question?). I had read The Master and Margarita in high school just for fun, and I was far from what one would call a "literature specialist" (and I wa...

jmarvin_

There was a bonus that I think was in packet 6, but I'm not sure. The word "altruism" came up in the second part of the bonus, then was the answer to the third part. My teammate sitting next to me said "I think it's altruism". I replied to him with, "But they just said altruism in the last part, it...

jmarvin_

I would be down to read, or to play on any of the harder question sets, if you're okay with a post-high-school participant.

jmarvin_

I'm left with a hole in my heart now, having missed what will probably be the only Pianos Become the Teeth lead-in in quizbowl history. But seriously, that was an awesome trash packet- the depth and variety in the music was amazing and I hope I don't miss any future packets like this. If anyone is i...

jmarvin_

Thanks to all the organizers and readers for pulling together a fun tournament; I had a great time.

Thanks also to Jonathan Magin, who, in a nice surprise, showed up and played for our shorthanded team.

jmarvin_

I'd like to sign up to play as a free agent.

jmarvin_

Colin from Lexington has already become a more-than-capable player after only one year, and talking to him after playing them at HSNCT revealed that he studies well and with dedication. He clearly loves the game, and I think that continued improvement from him and the rest of Lexington will more tha...

jmarvin_

Thanks, Stephen- I contacted Marissa and learned that, while BC's quiz bowl team is not very active right now (on the non-trash side of things), the student organization is still extant, official, and open to academic players joining and using both their buzzers and funding to play in ACF/NAQT/etc t...

jmarvin_

Hello all- I will be attending Boston College starting this fall, and am excited to play collegiate quizbowl. I understand it is relatively early to begin pondering the events of next school-year, but I am curious; I was wondering if anyone around Boston, or anyone, really, is entirely sure if there...

jmarvin_

I sent an email to the address on the website about a week ago, but it hasn't yet been replied to. Could you clear up the eligibility specifications for these tournaments? The website is very clear that all sorts of schools, public or private, are invited, but the (lack of) restriction to Massachuse...

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