ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

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ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Please discuss specific questions here. For reference: I edited the religion and mythology; Chris Ray edited the history, painting, philosophy, social science, and geo/trash/CE; John Lawrence edited the literature, music, and other arts; and Cody Voight edited the science.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by merv1618 »

I'll be the one to ask about the polar ice melting TU. It didn't seem to go off well as opposed to the rest of the earth sci in the set.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Cody »

merv1618 wrote:I'll be the one to ask about the polar ice melting TU. It didn't seem to go off well as opposed to the rest of the earth sci in the set.
I do not know what you're asking. It was a bit harder than the other ES, but I don't think there were any problems at the UMD site with it.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

There were a couple of questions in this set that I thought invited negs. The question on Lysander practically begged for a Xenophon buzz in the first half; the only reason I was hesitant to do so was because that stuff would have been in the second half of a Xenophon tossup. But, alas, I did, and I believe Libo did as well. The philosophy/law/social science question on Spain really sounded like it was talking about Grotius with the Just War theory--hence a neg with Holland.

Can we please, please ignore the supposed reign of Tarquinius Superbus and the horrible evil doings of his friends and family? It's bad enough when that repeatedly comes up in the myth distribution, but by my count that was considered history in this set, which is unfortunate because it didn't happen.

[EDIT: The same critique could be leveled against the tossup on helots. I'm not sure exactly what the early clues are referring to, but the later ones essentially refer to the agoge, which is at least questionably historical. I wouldn't say the answer line is off limits, but the clues should pertain to the ambiguous historical record, not the questionable propaganda of non-Spartan Greeks and Romans]

Mao's wives didn't go over at all well, and I'm of the opinion that Halford Mackinder is of no importance and has no business being as QB-famous as he is--and I'm professionally committed to the view that geography is insufficiently important in the social sciences.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

Tees-Exe Line wrote:There were a couple of questions in this set that I thought invited negs. The question on Lysander practically begged for a Xenophon buzz in the first half; the only reason I was hesitant to do so was because that stuff would have been in the second half of a Xenophon tossup. But, alas, I did, and I believe Libo did as well. The philosophy/law/social science question on Spain really sounded like it was talking about Grotius with the Just War theory--hence a neg with Holland.
I too negged both of these questions, but I'd rather attribute my negs to a lack of knowledge on my part (or a willingness to buzz on "On the Law of War" expecting "...and Peace") than a fault with the question unless someone demonstrates the problem with the actual question. That said, I'd like to hear from Chris about these to clear up whether we're just stupid or there was an actual problem here.
Tees-Exe Line wrote:Can we please, please ignore the supposed reign of Tarquinius Superbus and the horrible evil doings of his friends and family? It's bad enough when that repeatedly comes up in the myth distribution, but by my count that was considered history in this set, which is unfortunate because it didn't happen.
I generally dislike it when people ask for a knowable, known, culturally significant thing to stop coming up. I agree that this is probably better considered myth than history, but, like, is there actually a problem with the answer in and of itself other than that you dislike it?
Tees-Exe Line wrote:Mao's wives didn't go over at all well,
Why not? Seems like the question could have used - perhaps needed - a better prompt line (what if someone said "Chinese women," for example?) but that group (much like the annoyingly-described 2-person "group" Castor and Pollux) is a reified, askable answer which people can have unambiguous knowledge of.
Tees-Exe Line wrote:and I'm of the opinion that Halford Mackinder is of no importance and has no business being as QB-famous as he is--
This tossup was inappropriately hard for Regionals. I defer to someone who knows stuff about Mackinder to tell me whether it's inappropriate ever. What category was it counted as?
Tees-Exe Line wrote:and I'm professionally committed to the view that geography is insufficiently important in the social sciences
I found the human geography bonus (from the same packet) quite cool. Given that AP Human Geography is a thing, geography is in fact a full major at some institutions (my brother is a geography major), and people within the game have some level of direct or indirect academic exposure to it, I'm fine with questions on it becoming a thing once or twice at a tournament here or there.

My own thoughts to follow at some point. I have several.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

On the whole I though the history at this tournament was fairly good and well-written. I did have a few problems though, several of which have already been brought up:
Tees-Exe Line wrote:There were a couple of questions in this set that I thought invited negs. The question on Lysander practically begged for a Xenophon buzz in the first half; the only reason I was hesitant to do so was because that stuff would have been in the second half of a Xenophon tossup. But, alas, I did, and I believe Libo did as well. The philosophy/law/social science question on Spain really sounded like it was talking about Grotius with the Just War theory--hence a neg with Holland.
I only resisted the temptation to neg on that because there had been a bonus on the Anabasis in the previous round, and I felt that I could afford to wait on questions a bit in that match. Unfortunately this logic didn't work out so well for the tossups on the Potato War/War of the Bavarian Succession and "Bavaria," which came in back-to-back rounds. I also thought the same thing on the Just War theory (especially having recently read tracts from Grotius in class), but Matt negged before I could.
Tees-Exe Line wrote:Mao's wives didn't go over at all well
EDIT: I didn't have much of a problem with this question, actually.

I had a problem with the question on 'helots' as well in that the question specifically mentioned the people in question completing the agoge (again, to the best of my memory), so I buzzed with "Spartan soldiers." EDIT: I guess I didn't know the 'Mothones' clue.

The Tacitus tossup (written by the aforementioned Mr. Jackson) I feel exemplified the need for clearer use of pronouns, as it led in with "This source...on the origin from Tuisco of Mannus" (or something to that extend) and I buzzed with "Germania" - I was able to get the points back with a protest, though I'm not sure I should have been able to since I don't remember if there were any non-Germania clues in the lead-in (Matt said there were, but they may have been edited out).

Outside of history, the inflation tossup seemed quite easy to Cameron, Nick and I, since we've heard "shoeleather cost" as a lead-in multiple times in practice before, but I don't know if anyone else had this particular gripe.
Last edited by naan/steak-holding toll on Mon Feb 25, 2013 11:12 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

Tees-Exe Line wrote:Can we please, please ignore the supposed reign of Tarquinius Superbus and the horrible evil doings of his friends and family? It's bad enough when that repeatedly comes up in the myth distribution, but by my count that was considered history in this set, which is unfortunate because it didn't happen.
RyuAqua wrote:I generally dislike it when people ask for a knowable, known, culturally significant thing to stop coming up. I agree that this is probably better considered myth than history, but, like, is there actually a problem with the answer in and of itself other than that you dislike it?
I suppose if the people who take great pride from remembering Quetzalcoatl's mother-in-law's name two milliseconds before Matt Bollinger don't mind pounding out a Tarquinius Superbus question every other tournament, that's fine with me. Just please keep it out of history.
Tees-Exe Line wrote:Mao's wives didn't go over at all well,
RyuAqua wrote:Why not? Seems like the question could have used - perhaps needed - a better prompt line (what if someone said "Chinese women," for example?) but that group (much like the annoyingly-described 2-person "group" Castor and Pollux) is a reified, askable answer which people can have unambiguous knowledge of.
There was no way I was going to buzz on this sitting next to Charles Tian, but I was wondering what the answer line could possibly be the entire time. Charles ended up negging with "German military advisors to China" or something because of what he thinks was an incorrect clue; he may show up to explain/criticize.
Tees-Exe Line wrote:and I'm professionally committed to the view that geography is insufficiently important in the social sciences
RyuAqua wrote: I'm fine with questions on it becoming a thing once or twice at a tournament here or there.
Couldn't agree more.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by 1992 in spaceflight »

That Marriage a la Mode tossup was ridiculously hard. Also, can someone post that tossup? I remember hearing a title that made me guess A Rake's Progress.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Rufous-capped Thornbill »

The tossup on Mao's Wives was pretty terrible; let's not do that again.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Ringil »

I'll preface this by saying I'm pretty upset about the Lysander tossup as we pretty much lost our game against Illinois because of it. I think Lysander tossup was just straight up deceptive. It could also have easily been fixed to make it not so neg inducing with the simple line (This isn't Xenophon....).
1. Late in his career this man – who was notably not born a citizen – cooperated with the satrap Pharnabazus to arrange the assassination of one former enemy. This man was extensively and somewhat shadily financed by a ruler he would later support in revolt against Artaxerxes II that culminated in the Battle of Cunaxa. This beneficiary of Cyrus the Younger's patronage resumed his most famous office after his replacement Callicratidas lost the battle of Arginusae. He then defeated Alcibiades at the Battle of Notium prior to his most famous victory, which led to taking of the Piraeus, the destruction of the Long Walls, and the installation of the Thirty Tyrants. For 10 points, identify this general who took Athens after winning the naval battle of Aegospotami, winning the Peloponesian War for Sparta.
ANSWER: Lysander
Okay so my problems are as follows:
1) "this man – who was notably not born a citizen " First of all, of course he wasn't a Spartan citizen, you have to do all those Spartan trainings before you can become one. If you mean he was born a mothax, then why not just say that?? Furthermore, is this supposed to be some super helpful clue that will let us differentiate between Lysander and some unknown commander??? I know Michigan is commonly lambasted for using vague descriptors, but even I can tell this is pretty stupid.

2) "he would later support in revolt against Artaxerxes II that culminated in the Battle of Cunaxa" As far as I can tell this is not at all a clear fact. Lysander lost dominant political power in 403 BC. The expedition happened in 401 BC, which is a slight problem. Furthermore, this is not mentioned at all in the Anabasis (here is Book 1, which tells of how Cyrus gather the Ten Thousand, where it does tell how the Spartans helped him, but that's so generic and would be some original research/thought to conclude therefore that it was Lysander). Nor is it mentioned in Hellenica (which again mentions it was the Spartans in general) or Plutarch's Life of Lysander, which are the three major sources on his life. If there is a source for this, I'd love to see it, but besides Wikipedia I cannot find anything online.

3) He did not defeat Alcibiades at Notium. Alcibiades notably went off for whatever reason and put Antiochus, a subcommander in charge. Lysander beat Antiochus not Alcibiades (Hellenica).

4) He also never "took" Athens as much induced it to surrender... Especially since when he wanted to take it in 403 BC he failed.

John Lawrence's philosophy as espoused in the other thread about researching every clue is clearly not demonstrated here. I think John Lawrence's philosophy is one that should be followed by all editors (esp if it isn't just a single chief editor), otherwise we just have misleading and blatantly incorrect facts. Since quizbowl is largely based on facts, factual accuracy should be one of the pillars of this activity. While this is obviously a huge time burden on the editors, perhaps one way to solve this would be to have a location in the submitted questions where one can just list one's sources (kinda like NAQT has).

That helots tossup was also a terrible idea. It was immediately obvious it was some Spartan subgroup, but I guess it coulda been spartiates, perioeci, or mothakes.
Last edited by Ringil on Mon Feb 25, 2013 11:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

Good to know that question did actually totally suck, then.

I'm earnestly actually really confused why people disliked the Mao's wives question so much. Does anyone have a better reason than "I couldn't think through to the answer and therefore didn't deserve points for knowing it"?

Other tossups that seemed too hard for regular difficulty - William Hamilton, Caillebotte, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Hecatonchires, War of the League of Augsburg - all seemed like answer choices which stemmed quite directly from past quizbowl rather than what educated people might reasonably learn outside it, and struck me as too hard for Regionals for that reason. (I'm not so sure about Malacca, which seemed stacked with hard clues, but I'm bad at exploration history generally.)
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Steeve Ho You Fat »

merv1618 wrote:I'll be the one to ask about the polar ice melting TU. It didn't seem to go off well as opposed to the rest of the earth sci in the set.
I thought that both this and ocean acidification were good tossups (barring the bafflingly terrible writing mechanics of the latter) on important topics. Generally I liked the earth science and math, although I thought the astronomy was kind of spotty, especially the pulsar tossup which begged you to neg with nebulae when it mentioned the Crab one from a Supernova remnant.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

RyuAqua wrote:Caillebotte [...] seemed like [an] answer [choice] which stemmed quite directly from past quizbowl rather than what educated people might reasonably learn outside it
I don't think this is the right track along which to criticize this tossup--Caillebotte was a pretty important figure in the Impressionist movement and it's entirely likely he'd come up in a basic survey class. On the hard side as a tossup answer, certainly, but not entirely unreasonable. What I didn't like about the question was that it was really top-heavy, and spent a long time talking about minor paintings with only cursory and/or vague descriptions of his most famous paintings squeezed in at the end.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Mewto55555 »

Ukonvasara wrote:
RyuAqua wrote:Caillebotte [...] seemed like [an] answer [choice] which stemmed quite directly from past quizbowl rather than what educated people might reasonably learn outside it
... it's entirely likely he'd come up in a basic survey class.
For what it's worth (tiny sample size yay), we discussed him and looked at a bunch of his paintings in my art history class last year.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by marnold »

This tossup was inappropriately hard for Regionals. ... I found the human geography bonus (from the same packet) quite cool
I wrote both the Mackinder toss-up and the human geography bonus in that packet and I think their final form in the set was largely as written (I think I had a different easy part of the bonus); both were Geography - I just didn't want to write boring-ass almanac question. The Mackinder answer line was chosen purely because of quizbowl-famousness, but for the bonus I found some list of the most cited geographers and Yi-Fu Tuan was on there and seemed interesting, so in he went.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Whiter Hydra »

Plan Rubber wrote:especially the pulsar tossup which begged you to neg with nebulae when it mentioned the Crab one from a Supernova remnant.
I didn't have any issues with that clue. The clues before it said that it's a specific object, so something as nebulous as a nebula should be ruled out. And anyway, Crab isn't going to be dropped that early in a nebula tossup.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by at your pleasure »

Caillebotte was certainly a fairly prominent(if perhaps secondary) painter of the time; he was at any rate recognized at the time as important IIRC and most books that discuss impressionism I've seen cover him in varying levels of detail(probably they'd talk about The Bridge of Europe and Paris Street, Rainy Day). He's fine for Regionals in my opinion. It'd be good to have the tossup posted, though, since clearly it had too many hard clues on hard paintings.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Unicolored Jay »

The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi wrote:That Marriage a la Mode tossup was ridiculously hard. Also, can someone post that tossup? I remember hearing a title that made me guess A Rake's Progress.
While I don't have the set, I looked up the titles of the paintings in both sets of works, and there aren't any that overlap aside from "The Marriage Settlement" (Marriage a la Mode) and "The Marriage" (A Rake's Progress).
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Plan Rubber wrote:especially the pulsar tossup which begged you to neg with nebulae when it mentioned the Crab one from a Supernova remnant.
I didn't have any issues with that clue. The clues before it said that it's a specific object, so something as nebulous as a nebula should be ruled out. And anyway, Crab isn't going to be dropped that early in a nebula tossup.
I didn't buzz on that clue for the same reason, but I thought the term nebula can be applied to a specific object (even if said object's size/borders/etc. aren't clearly defined)?
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by 1992 in spaceflight »

Alliance in the Alps wrote:
The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi wrote:That Marriage a la Mode tossup was ridiculously hard. Also, can someone post that tossup? I remember hearing a title that made me guess A Rake's Progress.
While I don't have the set, I looked up the titles of the paintings in both sets of works, and there aren't any that overlap aside from "The Marriage Settlement" (Marriage a la Mode) and "The Marriage" (A Rake's Progress).
Well, time to go look over the two series again.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

NYU A + MSU + Caltech A wrote:7. One particularly grisly piece by this artist shows the titular Calf’s Head and Ox Tongue, while his depiction of Bathers shows a boy about to jump into a river from a diving board. One of the titular figures masterfully dual-wields a pair of watering cans in this painter's Gardeners, and he veered into more traditional impressionism in his image of an Italian Boulevard. Snow-covered rooftops and a traffic island were the major subjects during a period he spent painting from high elevations. This artist painted stripes of yellow and orange flowers in his Yellow Fields at Gennevilliers, and created several versions of people crossing a certain metal structure. A bottle of wine sits to the right of the three title figures in one of his most famous paintings, while features a lamp post above a man in a top hat holding an umbrella. For 10 points, name this French artist of The Bridge of Europe, The Floorscrapers, and Paris Street, Rainy Day.
ANSWER: Gustave Caillebotte
Doesn't really start getting into his three most famous paintings (the ones mentioned in the giveaway) until quite late.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Unicolored Jay »

The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi wrote:
Alliance in the Alps wrote:
The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi wrote:That Marriage a la Mode tossup was ridiculously hard. Also, can someone post that tossup? I remember hearing a title that made me guess A Rake's Progress.
While I don't have the set, I looked up the titles of the paintings in both sets of works, and there aren't any that overlap aside from "The Marriage Settlement" (Marriage a la Mode) and "The Marriage" (A Rake's Progress).
Well, time to go look over the two series again.
Actually, now that I realized that I did get emailed the set a few hours ago, I can post it:
Illinois/Dorman/Wellesley wrote:17. A man escapes through a window in this work as a bloodied man stands next to a kneeling woman as the floor is littered with masks and swords. Two dogs share a connected collar in a room with a medusa-head portrait nearby the central figure of this work, who negotiates over the construction of his mansion visible through a window. The artist of this work accompanied it with a story that employed character like the Viscount and the lawyer Silvertongue, who respectively whore around and have an affair with the Countess. The paintings The Bagnio, The Tête à Tête, and The Lady’s Death are featured in this painting cycle that satirizes the 18th Century English upper class. For 10 points, name this six-membered William Hogarth series about the debilitating love-union of Earl Squanderfield.
ANSWER: Marriage à-la-mode
So "The Marriage Settlement" didn't appear in this question at all aside from its description in the second sentence. And now that I look at this question, I realize why it seemed confusing to me at first - maybe it's just because I'm used to hearing the word "work" refer to a singular painting/novel/poem/whatever, but I had some serious trouble figuring out what one painting would have all that stuff going on in it.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Auroni »

I thought that the tossup on the Van Der Waals equation read like a parody of itself. It mostly had clues about other, more obscure modifications to the ideal gas law and namedropped them all, with very few clues about the equation itself.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Steeve Ho You Fat »

Alliance in the Alps wrote:
Communi-Bear Silo State wrote:
Plan Rubber wrote:especially the pulsar tossup which begged you to neg with nebulae when it mentioned the Crab one from a Supernova remnant.
I didn't have any issues with that clue. The clues before it said that it's a specific object, so something as nebulous as a nebula should be ruled out. And anyway, Crab isn't going to be dropped that early in a nebula tossup.
I didn't buzz on that clue for the same reason, but I thought the term nebula can be applied to a specific object (even if said object's size/borders/etc. aren't clearly defined)?
A search finds that 9/15 tossups on "nebulae" or a specific nebula use object as the pronoun. Also, I don't like the idea that people, when they hear a clue, should have to recognize that if it's what they're thinking of it's misplaced, and then not buzz because they're assuming that the editors or writers didn't just mess up and misplace a clue.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Cody »

Tokyo Sex Whale wrote:I thought that the tossup on the Van Der Waals equation read like a parody of itself. It mostly had clues about other, more obscure modifications to the ideal gas law and namedropped them all, with very few clues about the equation itself.
I strenuously object to this characterization. I spent an ungodly amount of time trying to find clues for this tossup, but unfortunately literally everything about it is deeply saturated in quizbowl, and I'm convinced it is impossible to write an acceptable tossup on it. However, literally every clue I could find about just the van der Waals equation (law of corresponding states, critical compress. factor = 3/8, a & b for intermolecular forces/finite molecular size, 'named for a Dutchman') and not its modifications were included, which was about half the tossup. Moreover, all the modifications to the van der Waals equation are incredibly important (esp. in chemical engineering) and widely used, but they're also known by everyone.

wrt pulsars--that was an (odd, since I obviously know what the Crab nebula is) oversight on my part (though there is no Vela nebula) and would have been easily alleviated by inclusion of a "They aren't nebulae" clause. my bad.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

SirT wrote:
Tokyo Sex Whale wrote:I thought that the tossup on the Van Der Waals equation read like a parody of itself. It mostly had clues about other, more obscure modifications to the ideal gas law and namedropped them all, with very few clues about the equation itself.
I strenuously object to this characterization. I spent an ungodly amount of time trying to find clues for this tossup, but unfortunately literally everything about it is deeply saturated in quizbowl, and I'm convinced it is impossible to write an acceptable tossup on it. However, literally every clue I could find about just the van der Waals equation (law of corresponding states, critical compress. factor = 3/8, a & b for intermolecular forces/finite molecular size, 'named for a Dutchman') and not its modifications were included, which was about half the tossup. Moreover, all the modifications to the van der Waals equation are incredibly important (esp. in chemical engineering) and widely used, but they're also known by everyone.
Next time try describing the BWR equation of state instead of just putting the name in the first line.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Cody »

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:Next time try describing the BWR equation of state instead of just putting the name in the first line.
I guess I could have said something about an 8 parameter improvement used for hydrocarbons, but I'm not convinced how buzzable that is. That's not to say I think it's a great question (edit: it might be one of the worst in the science, in retrospect), but Auroni saying that the question barely contained any clues about the vdW eq when it was actually mostly about the vdW eq (and not modifications to the ideal gas law / vdW) is simply incorrect.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Muriel Axon »

Communi-Bear Silo State wrote:And anyway, Crab isn't going to be dropped that early in a nebula tossup.
Adding to what Nutter said, considering that some clues will almost inevitably be misplaced in any tournament, this isn't a great justification. I agree that it would be a severe underestimate of Cody Voight's science knowledge to assume that he thinks the Crab Nebula is a remotely difficult clue, but answering quiz bowl questions shouldn't require that kind of mental gymnastics.

I was a bit confused by the bonus on 20th century German philosophers (Schmitt / Strauss / Schopenhauer), since Schopenhauer wasn't alive in the 20th century. I doubt this threw anybody off, but it would be a good idea to fix this, unless I horribly misheard the intro to the question.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by touchpack »

SirT wrote:
The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:Next time try describing the BWR equation of state instead of just putting the name in the first line.
I guess I could have said something about an 8 parameter improvement used for hydrocarbons, but I'm not convinced how buzzable that is. That's not to say I think it's a great question (edit: it might be one of the worst in the science, in retrospect), but Auroni saying that the question barely contained any clues about the vdW eq when it was actually mostly about the vdW eq (and not modifications to the ideal gas law / vdW) is simply incorrect.
I didn't get to hear that question in the packets played at the Chicago site, but hearing "8 parameter" + chemistry would send me to equation-of-state-land, although I doubt I would be able to divine what exactly the question would want. Then again, I buzzed in with confidence at "positive/negative deviations" in the Raoult's Law tossup from MAGNI while other people were complaining about that clue being useless, so I'm probably not the best test subject for this sort of thing. That said, I can understand why you would include clues about other equations of state, although it's frustrating to play since the BWR equation is really as much of a "modification of the van der Waals" as it is a modification of any other simpler equation of state. You can always toss up something like pressure, volume, temperature, etc. and use equation of state clues, although that has the downside of limiting the answer to one of only a few things immediately if the player knows that the BWR is an equation of state.
The Eighth Viscount of Waaaah wrote:
Communi-Bear Silo State wrote:And anyway, Crab isn't going to be dropped that early in a nebula tossup.
Adding to what Nutter said, considering that some clues will almost inevitably be misplaced in any tournament, this isn't a great justification. I agree that it would be a severe underestimate of Cody Voight's science knowledge to assume that he thinks the Crab Nebula is a remotely difficult clue, but answering quiz bowl questions shouldn't require that kind of mental gymnastics.

.
I don't really care either way about this Crab pulsar fight, but I will note that on the sequences tossup I heard "the Lucas one" really early and froze up for a couple of seconds before buzzing. (I also hesitated for a second when hearing "TIM/TOM" on the 2nd clue of the mitochondria tossup, and ended up losing that one to Ike) So even solid editors with good amounts of science knowledge can make mistakes about how well known something is, and the player shouldn't be expected to just naturally assume "that can't be dropped this early," since well, at least twice at this tournament, it WAS dropped that early.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Black-throated Antshrike »

Was there ever an answer to the resonance protest Cody?
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Cody »

Black-throated Antshrike wrote:Was there ever an answer to the resonance protest Cody?
denied, for that clue. ("A molecule is said to have this property if it contains a fully-conjugated cyclic system.")
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Fond du lac operon »

First of all, can we award a medal of some sort to whoever wrote the tossup on "people who have dated Taylor Swift?" Because that was awesome.
RyuAqua wrote:I'm earnestly actually really confused why people disliked the Mao's wives question so much. Does anyone have a better reason than "I couldn't think through to the answer and therefore didn't deserve points for knowing it"?
Well, I negged it with "Gang of Four," and my thought process was: "Okay, this is a small group of people in China. Oh hey, I know these clues, they're about Jiang Qing. But they said 'the third one.' Was the Gang of Four numbered? Probably at some point, yeah, and it's not like Jiang was part of some other famous group. Minus five? What the hell??" Now probably one of the earlier clues did rule out the Gang of Four, but I don't know hard clues on Gang of Four members, so that didn't help me. I think that's a pretty reasonable line of thinking, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were other ways to legitimately neg on clues about Mao's first two wives, since nobody really cares about them (as far as I know).

Philosophy: I mostly liked the philosophy; tossing up Plato based on what other people wrote about Plato was clever, and I liked the ontological argument tossup a lot (it's not a person or a work, which is a refreshing change; that said it was annoying that "ontological proof" wasn't given as acceptable, especially since the question eventually refers to it as a proof -- we did eventually get our reader to take it, though). I will say that I thought the lead-in for the Phanomenologie tossup was kind of misplaced, since the bildungsroman structure of that book is really famous (I think). Also, it would have been nice if the tossup on Spanish philosophers had had some clue from, like, Santayana or Ortega y Gasset before it started dropping clearly-Spanish-sounding names of people I've never heard of (although admittedly I have pretty narrow real philosophy knowledge -- certainly nothing about late Scholastics.) And yeah, I dunno what was up with claiming that Schopenhauer was a twentieth-century German philosopher.

Math: The tossups I heard seemed to have an unusually high proportion of "this word is used in several varying ways, let's toss up that word!" questions ("discrete," "completeness," "sequence"). I don't think there's anything wrong with this sort of question per se, but it'd be nice to mix it up some.

Economics: The tossup on "two" was clever, but "Kuhn poker," when read aloud, doesn't sound like something that polite people should write about. Just keep that sort of thing in mind. (See also: "Let's Do It With Bing Crosby.")
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Chimango Caracara »

The LASA A/UVA B packet as a whole seemed to have several misplaced clues. Bororo in the second line of Levi-Strauss, very obvious description of The Rape of Europa in the second line of Titian and ballroom dancing in the second line of Fugard all stood out to me.

The bildungsroman lead-in for The Phenomenology of Spirit was the most egregiously misplaced clue of the tournament.

Transparent tossups: Mormons, Duino Elegies, GABA (c'mon mentioning an acidic side chain in an amino acid side chain in the second line after saying it's a neurotransmitter).

There were a few questions with kindergarten sentence structure, most notably ocean acidification.

Questions I liked: the bonus on the awesome poem "Snake" with a cameo by world's best poet A. E. Housman, Brautigan/"Big Two-Hearted River" bonus, lyonization bonus, Etruscan architecture bonus, stuttering tossup, Camel Corps bonus (possibly my favorite history question since the CO Doubles one about locust swarms), long-term potentiation bonus, MAO bonus (boy half the biology bonuses I like were in packets I didn't actually play), pinacol rearrangement bonus, loss of heterozygosity bonus, butter tossup (this is the kind of trash that should be asked), ANWR bonus, the Dioscuri tossup (I'm not usually one for an excess of Greek stuff in the myth distribution but I thought this one was cool), Anabaptaptists/witch hunts bonus, Nujol mull as the hard part of the IR bonus, Humboldt/cholera bonus, chryselephantine sculpture bonus, Brother Jero bonus, copper tossup, Richard III tossup (possibly the best tossup of the tournament looking over everything), Evangeline bonus.

I thought I would have more questions to complain about but I don't really feel strongly about most. In general I was happy with the tournament.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by sssssssskkkk »

I think there was a factual inaccuracy in the tossup on "aldehydes." It led in with something about how "besides secondary alcohols, the methyl forms of these compounds undergo the iodoform reaction" and I buzzed in with "ketones," since methyl ketones do in fact undergo the iodoform reaction, but I was negged...
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Cody »

sssssssskkkk wrote:I think there was a factual inaccuracy in the tossup on "aldehydes." It led in with something about how "besides secondary alcohols, the methyl forms of these compounds undergo the iodoform reaction" and I buzzed in with "ketones," since methyl ketones do in fact undergo the iodoform reaction, but I was negged...
This was a source of much confusion; I thought the wording was pretty clear ("Although not a primary alcohol, only one of these compounds with a methyl group undergoes the iodoform reaction."), but clearly something along the lines of "only the simplest of these compounds with a methyl group" would have been better. There is nothing incorrect about the lead-in, though, since all methyl ketones undergo the iodoform reaction.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by sssssssskkkk »

Oh okay...I guess I didn't pay attention to the fact that only "one of these compounds" with a methyl group could undergo the test. "Methyl" and "iodoform test" together do seem like negbait though.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Cody »

sssssssskkkk wrote:Oh okay...I guess I didn't pay attention to the fact that only "one of these compounds" with a methyl group could undergo the test. "Methyl" and "iodoform test" together do seem like negbait though.
This happened to multiple people, so I sympathize, I guess, [it could have been a little clearer] but there is nothing in the abstract that says such a clue would be negbait; you can't just buzz in regardless of the context.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Rococo A Go Go »

The House of Lords tossup was pretty transparent. My entire thought process before buzzing in was "this is a British political institution and isn't the House of Commons."
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Chimango Caracara »

SirT wrote:
sssssssskkkk wrote:I think there was a factual inaccuracy in the tossup on "aldehydes." It led in with something about how "besides secondary alcohols, the methyl forms of these compounds undergo the iodoform reaction" and I buzzed in with "ketones," since methyl ketones do in fact undergo the iodoform reaction, but I was negged...
This was a source of much confusion; I thought the wording was pretty clear ("Although not a primary alcohol, only one of these compounds with a methyl group undergoes the iodoform reaction."), but clearly something along the lines of "only the simplest of these compounds with a methyl group" would have been better. There is nothing incorrect about the lead-in, though, since all methyl ketones undergo the iodoform reaction.
I didn't play this question, but when I looked at that packet I had to read the leadin several times to parse it. It seemed like it was saying that there was one mole of the compound in the iodoform reaction or something. I almost certainly would have negged with ketones on that clue since it mentions compounds having methyl varieties that undergo the iodoform reaction. I guess it makes sense that it's talking about acetaldehyde when you think about it but I think it's a bad clue since it immediately brings to mind the wrong answer in such a way that seems to be based on knowledge, which is a surefire way to induce negging.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by CWSYuen »

Can someone post the the Malacca tossup? I was a bit confused when it started referring to "this city" after mentioning Zheng He. I'd always thought that Malacca either referred to the Sultanate or the Straits (in which Zheng He fought a battle or two against the pirates based there) and not a city.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

CWSYuen wrote:Can someone post the the Malacca tossup? I was a bit confused when it started referring to "this city" after mentioning Zheng He. I'd always thought that Malacca either referred to the Sultanate or the Straits (in which Zheng He fought a battle or two against the pirates based there) and not a city.
According to legend, this city was founded when a man saw a chevrotain defeat his hunting dogs after fleeing the kingdom of Singapura following its invasion by an empire led by Hayam Wuruk. The establishment of a palace complex on Bukit Cina in this city on the Bertam River followed Princess Hang Li Po’s arrival to marry its ruler Mansur Shah. This city was visited at least five times by Zheng He, whose Seven Wells lie at the foot of the “Chinese Hill” in this city, which also contains a fort called A Famosa. The Suma Oriental notes that “whoever is lord of [this city] has his hand on the throat of Venice” and was written by Tome Pires, one of many Portuguese to live her after it was taken from Mahmud Shah by Afonso de Albuquerque in 1511. For 10 points, name this city founded by Parameswara and namesake of a sultanate on the Malay peninsula, more famously the namesake of the strait separating that peninsula from Sumatra.
ANSWER: Malacca [or Melaka]

I wrote this tossup. Malacca is both a city and the name of a sultanate; when I wrote this question, I specifically avoided mentioning the word 'sultan' or its variants in association with its rulers, because I don't know of any other particularly important cities that also named prominent sultanates in that particular region and figured that such a clue might give it away too early.
Last edited by naan/steak-holding toll on Wed Feb 27, 2013 1:39 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Cody »

Chimango Caracara wrote:I didn't play this question, but when I looked at that packet I had to read the leadin several times to parse it. It seemed like it was saying that there was one mole of the compound in the iodoform reaction or something. I almost certainly would have negged with ketones on that clue since it mentions compounds having methyl varieties that undergo the iodoform reaction. I guess it makes sense that it's talking about acetaldehyde when you think about it but I think it's a bad clue since it immediately brings to mind the wrong answer in such a way that seems to be based on knowledge, which is a surefire way to induce negging.
Well, I'm not going to argue that it was a good clue since, empirically, it played very poorly. However, I'm not sure where there is any ambiguity in the clue [nor why you would interpret it as moles] and I probably wouldn't have much sympathy if it played the same way with the phrasing "Only the simplest type of this compound with a methyl group is capable of undergoing the iodoform reaction." Despite what Ryan Westbrook would have you believe, the words between distinct clues are not simply filler and context is incredibly important. There are plenty of situations in quizbowl where a [collection of] phrase can 'organically' bring to mind the wrong answer if you don't choose to actually evaluate the clue, but that's no reason not to use them.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Chimango Caracara »

SirT wrote:
Chimango Caracara wrote:I didn't play this question, but when I looked at that packet I had to read the leadin several times to parse it. It seemed like it was saying that there was one mole of the compound in the iodoform reaction or something. I almost certainly would have negged with ketones on that clue since it mentions compounds having methyl varieties that undergo the iodoform reaction. I guess it makes sense that it's talking about acetaldehyde when you think about it but I think it's a bad clue since it immediately brings to mind the wrong answer in such a way that seems to be based on knowledge, which is a surefire way to induce negging.
Well, I'm not going to argue that it was a good clue since, empirically, it played very poorly. However, I'm not sure where there is any ambiguity in the clue [nor why you would interpret it as moles] and I probably wouldn't have much sympathy if it played the same way with the phrasing "Only the simplest type of this compound with a methyl group is capable of undergoing the iodoform reaction." Despite what Ryan Westbrook would have you believe, the words between distinct clues are not simply filler and context is incredibly important. There are plenty of situations in quizbowl where a [collection of] phrase can 'organically' bring to mind the wrong answer if you don't choose to actually evaluate the clue, but that's no reason not to use them.
I mean, that was just what came to mind because I thought the phrasing was really bizarre and I had no idea what it meant. To me, it seemed like that phrase was specifically talking about the typical iodoform reaction of methyl ketones. The alternate phrasing you're proposing seems clearer, although since there's only one aldehyde with a methyl group it seems strange to talk about "the simplest type of this compound with a methyl group." I think my hangup is that both versions of the clue seem to be talking about a class containing multiple compounds, which seems to indicate "methyl ketones." If the clue said something like, "Only one example of these non-primary alcohol compounds is polyhalogenated in a base-catalyzed reaction, giving it a positive result in the iodoform test that indicates it contains a methyl group" that seems to work better since it doesn't imply that there are multiple aldehydes with methyl groups, only one of which undergoes the iodoform reaction.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by touchpack »

Chimango Caracara wrote:
SirT wrote:
Chimango Caracara wrote:I didn't play this question, but when I looked at that packet I had to read the leadin several times to parse it. It seemed like it was saying that there was one mole of the compound in the iodoform reaction or something. I almost certainly would have negged with ketones on that clue since it mentions compounds having methyl varieties that undergo the iodoform reaction. I guess it makes sense that it's talking about acetaldehyde when you think about it but I think it's a bad clue since it immediately brings to mind the wrong answer in such a way that seems to be based on knowledge, which is a surefire way to induce negging.
Well, I'm not going to argue that it was a good clue since, empirically, it played very poorly. However, I'm not sure where there is any ambiguity in the clue [nor why you would interpret it as moles] and I probably wouldn't have much sympathy if it played the same way with the phrasing "Only the simplest type of this compound with a methyl group is capable of undergoing the iodoform reaction." Despite what Ryan Westbrook would have you believe, the words between distinct clues are not simply filler and context is incredibly important. There are plenty of situations in quizbowl where a [collection of] phrase can 'organically' bring to mind the wrong answer if you don't choose to actually evaluate the clue, but that's no reason not to use them.
I mean, that was just what came to mind because I thought the phrasing was really bizarre and I had no idea what it meant. To me, it seemed like that phrase was specifically talking about the typical iodoform reaction of methyl ketones. The alternate phrasing you're proposing seems clearer, although since there's only one aldehyde with a methyl group it seems strange to talk about "the simplest type of this compound with a methyl group." I think my hangup is that both versions of the clue seem to be talking about a class containing multiple compounds, which seems to indicate "methyl ketones." If the clue said something like, "Only one example of these non-primary alcohol compounds is polyhalogenated in a base-catalyzed reaction, giving it a positive result in the iodoform test that indicates it contains a methyl group" that seems to work better since it doesn't imply that there are multiple aldehydes with methyl groups, only one of which undergoes the iodoform reaction.
Or, you could just not use clues that require the player to go through mental gymnastics to divine what the writer is looking for. (I didn't play this tossup nor would I have been able to buzz on that clue, but it just sounds like a bad idea to me--granted, it's often not easy to write clues that uniquely talk about aldehydes or ketones since they share so much chemistry, but that's not an excuse)
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by minusfive »

As a sidenote, and I know this doesn't keep people up much at night, but it takes Canadian teams about 1.5 seconds to seek and destroy any question to do with Canada. The prominent example I recall from this tournament was the Red River Rebellion.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

minusfive wrote:As a sidenote, and I know this doesn't keep people up much at night, but it takes Canadian teams about 1.5 seconds to seek and destroy any question to do with Canada. The prominent example I recall from this tournament was the Red River Rebellion.
Apparently the mission features a self-destruct anomaly, as Charles Tian basically reenacted the Battle of the Thames on that question, with Will Nediger in the role of Henry Procter.

[Sorry Will!]
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Ringil »

Tees-Exe Line wrote:
minusfive wrote:As a sidenote, and I know this doesn't keep people up much at night, but it takes Canadian teams about 1.5 seconds to seek and destroy any question to do with Canada. The prominent example I recall from this tournament was the Red River Rebellion.
Apparently the mission features a self-destruct anomaly, as Charles Tian basically reenacted the Battle of the Thames on that question, with Will Nediger in the role of Henry Procter.

[Sorry Will!]
Will's abandoned his Canadian comrades, so it's natural that he is slowly losing his Canada-ness :)
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by women, fire and dangerous things »

Ringil wrote:
Tees-Exe Line wrote:
minusfive wrote:As a sidenote, and I know this doesn't keep people up much at night, but it takes Canadian teams about 1.5 seconds to seek and destroy any question to do with Canada. The prominent example I recall from this tournament was the Red River Rebellion.
Apparently the mission features a self-destruct anomaly, as Charles Tian basically reenacted the Battle of the Thames on that question, with Will Nediger in the role of Henry Procter.

[Sorry Will!]
Will's abandoned his Canadian comrades, so it's natural that he is slowly losing his Canada-ness :)
Yeah, I learned that stuff in, like, middle school and have long since forgotten most of it.
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

Oh god, does that mean Patrick's going to lose his edge?

EDIT: Its critique time

BELLARMINE + CHICAGO A
-This Bragg's Law tossup follows a format that shows up a lot in this tournament that's kind of suboptimal, going "This answer has something to do with [eponym]. This answer also has to do with [eponym]", repeatedly. I won't point this out every time it happens, but its kind of boring. Also Ewald sphere seems early
-I would like to hear what people didn't like about this Wittig tossup. I guess saying triply-eponymous that early isn't a good idea?
-Embarrassingly, this Philadelphia tossup went really late.
-This clue about the fungal GABA toxin is much harder than the stuff before it, in my opinion.
-There should be a prompt on acid dissociation constant on partial answers and "equilibrium constant", since its the equilibrium constant of the dissociation reaction.
-Spinocerebellar ataxia is a really hard hard part. It was a hard part at 2007 ACF nationals; has it crept since then?
-Is the Ringelmann effect real? It feels like there's some stuff in the social science that just whizzed by us, esp in categories that I thought we had covered pretty well. I don't know enough about this to say.
-This Ur bonus has two hard parts, and is Sargon really an easy part?

BELLVUE + GTECH + MICHIGAN A
-Let's talk about oceanic acidification
This process is occurring in tandem with hypercapnia. This process raises the CCD. This process can be depicted on a Bjerrum plot.
I don't know what the CCD is, but the first and third clues both seem to apply to "blood acidification". The Bjerrum plot is useful for any polyprotic acid in solution, and hypercapnia is just high lung CO2. I'm glad I managed to figure it out.

-This dogs tossup is really good.
-The Schwann cell tossup has one confusing sentence: "These cells are responsible for forming a Remak bundle". C fibers form Remak bundles, which is why I negged with neurons. Also, your clues for Schwannomas aren't particularly notable; mentioning neurofibromatosis or something might have gone over better.
-"omega" should be acceptable for angular frequency
-G6PD deficiency is a good hard part
-Grotthus-Draper law?!

More later.
Last edited by Sima Guang Hater on Wed Feb 27, 2013 3:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Skepticism and Animal Feed
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

Tees-Exe Line wrote:
minusfive wrote:As a sidenote, and I know this doesn't keep people up much at night, but it takes Canadian teams about 1.5 seconds to seek and destroy any question to do with Canada. The prominent example I recall from this tournament was the Red River Rebellion.
Apparently the mission features a self-destruct anomaly, as Charles Tian basically reenacted the Battle of the Thames on that question, with Will Nediger in the role of Henry Procter.

[Sorry Will!]
THE Hero of Fort Meigs, my boys
Shall be our song to-night,
Renowned in peace, and famed in war---
He never lost a fight.
From many a blood red field and fort,
He's made the Tories fly,
He'll renovate the Kitchen-court,
And make Van Buren sigh!

He'll get the People's honest votes--
The people can't be bought,
With Loco-foco Treasury Notes---
No, no, they can't be caught!

The hero of Fort Meigs, my boys,
Is now the people's choice,
He's sure of every Freeman's vote,
He's cheered by every voice!

He'll stop Tom Benton's ragged "Ball,"
And spoil his Post Note robe,
He'll beat the Loco-focos all,
And earthquake Kendall's "Globe."
The Hero of Fort Meigs, my boys,--
In days of "auld lang syne,"
He fought, and his heroic deeds,
On Fame's broad pages shine.

He'll save the country--hope revives,
Joy sparkles in each eye,
Hard cider sparkles on the board,
And "Harrison!" 's the cry.
The hero of Fort Meigs, my boys,
Though he'd no cotton bags
To fight behind, he met the foe,
And rent their British flags.

The Federals, who in Hartford's shades,
In grave Convention sat,
Burnt blue-lights and wore "black cockades,"
He'll lay the Federals flat.
The Hero of Fort Meigs, my boys,
Let's cheer him all around,
Like a proud barque he speeds along,
While Martin's "homeward bound."

Brave Harrison 's log-cabin home
Where freedom's banner waves,
Is nobler than the palace-dome,
That holds Van Buren's slaves.
The Hero of Fort Meigs, my boys,
H'll spike Van Buren's gun,
And make the spoilsmen walk, although
No doubt, they'd rather run.

And soon Van Buren wand'ring home,
To rest from all his toils,
Will sing aloud "Some Love to Roam,"
"But not without the spoils!"
The Hero of Fort Meigs, my boys,
He'll make Van Buren sigh,
He'll renovate the Kitchen-court,
And make the Tories FLY!
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Tees-Exe Line
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Re: ACF Regionals 2013 Specific Question Discussion

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

It's legitimately interesting that the song declaims the Hartford Convention and the Federalists as well as opposing slavery. We learn that Harrison was nominated as a supposedly populist antidote to the Democrats' Jacksonian shtick; here he's not just that but also a hero of the War of 1812, not a traitor--as the Whigs probably bore the Federalist stigma.
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