A lot of my questions emerge from reading something, highlighting a passage, then going back and turning that passage into a clue in my gigantic OneNote of unfinished questions (for reference, in my Post-1945 American History notebook, there are 375 skeletons of questions in there).6. They're not toll plazas, but a system called EZpay is widely used in these locations. In the early '90s, the city of Monterey, California commissioned Maxis to develop SimSite to simulate the economic impact of closing of one of these places. Until 1973, otherwise useless currency called MPCs were issued to people working at these places to help protect against inflation. Daniel Immewahr credits one of these places in Burtonwood with building the vibrant rock culture in Liverpool that produced the Beatles. In 2018, Nathan Ruser pointed out how the location and boundaries of these places were inadvertently made () public by allegedly anonymized Strava fitness data. The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo forced the evacuation of one of these places in Subic Bay in the Philippines. In 2002, several prisoners were tortured next to one of these locations in Bagram, Afghanistan. For 10 points, (*) name these places where US troops congregate.
ANSWER: US military bases [or US defense bases; or Army bases; or Navy bases; or Air Force bases; or US Naval Stations; or air field; or secret military bases; or US military black sites]
In this case, the origins of this question date back to reading Daniel Immewahr's excellent book How to Hide an Empire. I added a stub about the influence of military bases on the Beatles. I later came across the game SimSite which seemed like a great clue for the sensibility of this tournament. At this point, I started doing some actual research into US military bases to get enough clues for a full tossup.
I had previously read about the Strava data leak and knew to seek that out. I can't recall the specifics of how I found the other clues, but probably some combination of looking at Wikipedia articles and doing some site specific Google searches. I find that stuff like site:nytimes.com or "history of military bases" Google Books searches often are a path to finding meaty quizbowl clues.
Looking at the final question, I think I could have done a better job on the EZPay and MPCs clues. They both mostly rely on knowing that specific term and may be too hard to buzz on in isolation. It was hard to give the most important info about MPCs, namely that they were issued to prevent the local currencies from being inflated by a strong US dollar. In retrospect, I probably could have just said something to that effect without this tossup being transparent. I think I have a higher fear of transparency than most writers and editors and it sometimes ends up with questions that play too hard.
If I recall correctly, I had the idea to write something on forklifts since I first jotted down some answer lines for the first tech tournament I wrote. But I didn't expand this into a full question until I came across that fact about hydrogen fuel cells in a BusinessWeek feature. In retrospect, that clue may be a little hard to buzz on because I had to drop the important context of why having a low power forklift is dangerous.17. In a unanimous Supreme Court decision, Sandra Day O'Connor ruled that a company named for these devices had created a hostile work environment for employees such as Theresa Harris. A maker of these devices, Hyster-Yale Materials, bought Nuvera Fuel Cells; one of the only widespread uses of hydrogen fuel cells is in these devices since they produce no emissions and don't slow down on low power. According to an OSHA scale, Class IV ("four") versions of these vehicles are not designed to go () outdoors. These vehicles usually have a counterweight in the back and a hydraulically powered mast. In the 1930s, these vehicles became more useful after pallet sizes were standardized. The use of these devices in a Home Depot requires aisles to be closed. For 10 points, (*) name these vehicles which have two prongs on the front to help raise stuff up.
ANSWER: forklifts [or lift truck; or fork truck; or fork hoist; or forklift truck; or reach truck; or stacker; or stock picker]
I tried to use a few different types of clues in this one. Saying "OSHA" and "outdoors" was something of a context clue to get you thinking that these were vehicles used at work sites. Pallet sizes is another clue that is going to reward your general knowledge of what a pallet is. That Home Depot clue is one of those observations from real life clues I try to include in this set as a fun side event.
This one basically came directly from Robert Caro's LBJ biography. It was one of my favorite questions as it asked about someone famous for a bunch of things in a narrow way suiting the distribution of this tournament.1. In the 1940s, this man secured a handshake agreement with announcer John Hicks to run one of his businesses before screwing Hicks out of the agreed share of the business's profits. A series of businesses owned by this man's family were purchased for over 100 million dollars by Emmins Communications in 2003. This man built his powerbase by distributing huge amounts of cash raised by Brown & Root, a business that built the Marshall Ford Dam. This man's wife served as the president of a holding company whose main asset was () KTBC, purchased at an extreme discount in 1943; that TV station was later made much more valuable by rules changes he secured from the FCC. This man was likely the first politician anywhere to campaign by helicopter in a campaign he notoriously stole from Coke Stevenson, earning him the nickname "Landslide." For 10 points, (*) name President whose wife Lady Bird "owned" a profitable Austin TV station.
ANSWER: Lyndon Baines Johnson [or LBJ]
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Well, that was just three questions but did take a while to write. I need to make dinner but will likely be back with a few more later. Hopefully this is motivation for others to post about their own questions and for people who don't know if they want to play Shock of the Old to consider there's a lot of questions in this set you may not have expected from the logline.