Odd Ways of Learning Things

Tell your tales of bygone days and rank historical things here.
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Santa Claus
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by Santa Claus »

Stefan HSQBRankovich wrote:
cornfused wrote:All of my Isambard Kingdom Brunel knowledge comes from Hark! A Vagrant.
I'm pretty sure these are the only reasons I'm aware of anything that's actually useful in any way.
I can attest to the amount of knowledge one gets from webcomics, being an avid reader of Harkavagrant and xkcd myself.

I first-lined the tossup on Utah at the 2014 HSNCT off the name of their former attorney general John Swallow. I had previously looked him up because a separate (and far less important) person with the same name had developed a neutrally-buoyant float used in Lagrangian current analysis, and because that's the kind of thing you have to study in Ocean Sciences Bowl. As the John Swallow I was looking for had no Wikipedia article I remembered his name to be the same as the encumbent attorney general of Utah. When I got that buzz, I found out he was removed from office though.

I also got the question on the Chesapeake Bay in the last few games of the 2015 HSNCT because I went there for an OSB award trip that summer and I ate blue crab.

EDIT:
That, and I spent a lot of time poring over US fishing statistics from 2012, divided both by state and by type of catch (in 2011 blue crab over took dungeness as the gross earner, but every other year, including all the years since, it's been a close second).

A few more things I remembered:

I powered a question on Hillary Clinton after it reused a clue I had negged on three years prior, because it mentioned the name of her book "It Takes a Village". I had buzzed because it shared its name with a fan-fiction I had read recently.

I have owned Theodore Gray's book "Elements" since like, seventh grade, and I've read it several dozen times. There are a ton of great clues for elements and specific compounds in that book, but that's not really appropriate for this thread. There is a much more convoluted way of getting questions right than just learning the clue outright.

On the page in "Elements" about neon, Theodore Gray plugs his friend Oliver Sacks' book "Uncle Tungsten" by mentioning how he walked through Times Square with a spectroscope. Since I enjoyed Gray's book so much, I went out of my way to check that book out of the library, along with a few other of Sacks' books. One of those was his "Oaxaca Journal", which detailed his visit to the Mexican province. One of the events he describes is getting one of his shirts dyed in a massive vat of cochineal pigment that had been harvested in the area, creating a deep red color. Five years later in senior English, we read Emily Dickinson's poem "Hummingbird" whose first lines are "A route of evanescence. With a revolving wheel; A resonance of emerald, A rush of cochineal". I powered a question on Dickinson on that clue.

Also I first-lined the tossup on the Vasa dynasty in STIMPY because the day we read it in practice there was a comic on the frontpage of /r/polandball that talked about the sinking of ship, and that was the clue they used.
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by Wynaut »

I first learned about Ocracoke Island because of a Wheel of Fortune contestant from there. She also talked about its weird dialect.

Another one I just remembered: I first heard about Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand in my first-year engineering class. It was in the context of finger implants that needed to withstand a certain number of presses.
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by Considered Harmful »

I got the tossup on gamma rays at ACF Regionals on "bursts" because I remembered it from this. I also got a Jesus tossup at HSNCT last year on "Quest for the Historical [this man]" thanks to Eric Mukherjee's hsqb username.
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by dhumphreys17 »

Around occasionally wrote:I got the tossup on gamma rays at ACF Regionals on "bursts" because I remembered it from this. I also got a Jesus tossup at HSNCT last year on "Quest for the Historical [this man]" thanks to Eric Mukherjee's hsqb username.
Sort of the same thing has happened to me twice on the same answerline; I powered a Finland tossup based on Will Overman's hsqb username, Vainamoinen; I powered a different Finland tossup off of Rob Carson's hsqb username, ukonvasara.
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by Ndg »

got a question on Montauk once after eating some Pepperidge Farm cookies.
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock »

I powered the MLK tossup on Cubans at the mention of Fort Chaffee, which I know because there was a Ghost Adventures episode there.
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by gerbilownage »

I once got a DII SCT question on mangoes on a clue about their Tommy Atkins variety, because when I was on vacation in Hawaii in 5th grade, I was skimming a book that discussed mangoes. The only reason I remember the Tommy Atkins variety was because the author spent five pages just talking about how tommy atkins were literally the worst variety of mango and how literally every other variety tasted better and more unique, but because it was easy to grow them in florida everybody started growing them.
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by SpanishSpy »

Got two-thirds of a bonus on Kingdom Hearts at ACF Fall because my sister used to play it.
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by Rothlover »

I once learned about Shlomo Shekelburg from a now forbidden zoned post necessitating this edit.
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by Andruwxnsa »

During our game against Northwestern at ACF Nationals, notable demigod Michael Coates got a tossup on Marfan syndrome second line. When we asked him about it after the game, he said that he buzzed on the clue about the Ghent criteria because he had once gotten tested for Marfan syndrome using the described procedure. We ended up winning the game by one tossup.
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by CPiGuy »

I got a question at ICT based on [entity] knowledge.

Don't post content from unclear sets! --Mgmt.


Edit: I'm stupid, thought that would be vague enough. you should probably FZ this and I'll just repost when set is clear. my bad.
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

Andruwxnsa wrote:During our game against Northwestern at ACF Nationals, notable demigod Michael Coates got a tossup on Marfan syndrome second line. When we asked him about it after the game, he said that he buzzed on the clue about the Ghent criteria because he had once gotten tested for Marfan syndrome using the described procedure. We ended up winning the game by one tossup.
And Northwestern was exactly as salty about this as you'd expect.

:oops:
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by Bosa of York »

I got the Brahms question at SCT--which mentioned he was liked by Eduard Hanslick--because of this post
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by nsb2 »

I firstlined a tossup on adagios from a YouTube comment about Albinoni's Adagio that I had read the previous day.
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by SpanishSpy »

I've gotten more than one Swedish history tossup by listening to Sabaton's album Carolus Rex
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by Dirty Water »

So, K-pop.

Underneath all the flashy music videos, ridiculous choreographies, cultural appropriation, and synthesizing like there’s no tomorrow, K-pop actually has a surprisingly large amount of culturally and academically relevant content hidden in its lyrics, visuals, and marketing. The casual listener definitely doesn’t pick up on these, and much of it is lost through translation. Many fans probably don’t even know it when they see it, simply because the references are too obscure or foreign to merit a second look. But when you’ve been playing quizbowl, certain things certainly pop out at you.

Let’s take a look at “Spring Day” by BTS. This is a nice song with a pretty video and a bunch of attractive guys. My life experience tells me that that list is, to most fans, in order of increasing importance. Now, look at this still from the video:
Image
I kinda freaked out when I saw this, because, like, what? The number one song in the country throws in a reference to Ursula K. Le Guin? I can guarantee you that almost no BTS fan had heard of "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" or Le Guin before this video was released.

BTS has, in the past five years, risen from a nobody to the country’s biggest stars. When fans figured out that their most recent album (of which “Spring Day” is a part) was based on Hermann Hesse’s Demian, sales of that book apparently went wild in Korea.

...I digress. I guess my main thesis is that because the promotion of a song has so many more components in Korea than in the US - musical acts often pull off an n-tuple act of singer, actor, dancer, producer, TV host, radio host, etc… so there’s a lot more creative room to be able to fit in references.

Much of my arts/philo/SS knowledge actually comes from looking up people name-dropped in Korean tracks… in “Zutter”, you have TOP rapping, “Francis Bacon in my kitchen / I’m like Calder dancing on top of your head”.

Hey, it gets me points, okay?
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by Votre Kickstarter Est Nul »

Last year's ACF Fall had a tossup on Voodoo that I firstlined because of Pedro Cerrano's shrine with hot pepper rum in Major League.
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by Joshua Rutsky »

I first-lined a question on the history of quiz bowl after writing a lecture on the significance of trivia in modern society for a group of septuagenarian retired professors.
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by SpanishSpy »

Got a tossup on the Zoot Suit Riots on a Chicago Open being used for practice because of this song.
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by J. Young »

I once powered a tossup on "Liberty or Death" because of my old Culpeper Flag Facebook profile picture.
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by CPiGuy »

I, when the set wasn't clear, wrote:I got a question at ICT based on [entity] knowledge.
I got a tossup at ICT based on Guardians of Ga'Hoole knowledge.
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by armitage »

It occurred to me that I wasn't the only person using the internet in 2009 and maybe someone else in quiz bowl also first came across "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" through this one flash game on Kongregate. If not, could be an amusing diversion anyway.
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by Good Goblin Housekeeping »

armitage wrote:It occurred to me that I wasn't the only person using the internet in 2009 and maybe someone else in quiz bowl also first came across "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" through this one flash game on Kongregate. If not, could be an amusing diversion anyway.
or a real game about poetry
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by 34 + P.J. Dozier »

I think I once first-lined a tossup on axes during practice because I'd watched a Buzzfeed Unsolved episode on the Axeman of New Orleans.
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by Hypersmart »

Thiccasso's Guernthicca wrote: Sun Jan 21, 2018 5:23 pm I think I once first-lined a tossup on axes during practice because I'd watched a Buzzfeed Unsolved episode on the Axeman of New Orleans.
I once first-lined a tossup about the year 2000 because I saw an SNL skit. The buzzword was "lockbox".
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by No1AtBeingMediocore »

First lined a shingles clue because I remembered "If you've had chickenpox, the shingles virus is already inside you"

Thank you, random 2000s drug commercial!
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by whatamidoinghere »

I firstlined the BHSAT 2019 tossup on "The Buddha" cause I remembered that in Cartoon History of the Universe, the Buddha eating pork was a repeated thing that happened.
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Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Post by thederpyaxolotl »

I firstlined a WW2 question from info I got from a magazine I impulse bought while I was bored at a European airport.
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