One week into working at home for the first time (previously the order for confinement was rest,) and I’ve found myself weirdly productive. I was able to knock out some tests on Friday that would have taken me two to three days otherwise, but I really haven’t been coordinated in my efforts. I’ve felt exhausted at 5:01pm every day, and I’ve not touched some simple tasks that I would normally start my day with just to get one thing off my plate. I need to get back to that, because I recognize what that avoidance is. When I was sick, I would set one achievable goal before me every day. You will need that too as we go through this. Your normal routine has been disrupted, and a little success every day will help compensate for the new uncertainty.
This week also begins our first experiment in cyberschooling. The school is teleconferencing her classes, and rather than have the two of us on opposite ends of the dining room table, we’ve cleaned up her little office. This is good because it eliminates crosstalk of me swearing at code in front of a sixth-grade class, and keeps us from distracting each other. Or worse, I could break out a buzzer system, and she’d be the only one who could use it. I don’t really want to deal with “Did you bring buzzers for the whole class, Mr. Kidder?”
Stuff to Hear
People are making art available online to get us through this, and one of those is Patrick Stewart’s effort at reading a sonnet a day online. Mark Coen, an occasional teammate of mine, beat Sir Patrick by a week. Mark started with a volume of Yeats, and now we have our poetry for this edition.
Stuff to Read
I’ve always thought Raymond Chandler’s The Simple Art of Murder to be a good read for criticism, and when I discovered that someone had put a copy of it online inside Genius, well, I was amazed because that made a sort of sense.
The Articles I Learned from This Week
A history of the video game Rampage which answers the question I wanted to remember “What was the first city you trashed in that game?”
A history of the first Transit of Mercury to be noted, and almost forgotten.
The Articles You Could Learn from This Week
Milton’s Paradise Lost is discussed in this article from the BBC.
Any mention of the philosopher A. J. Ayer, as it did in a practice last week, reminds me of this story, which is the story I’m always amazed that I’ve never seen in questions. I learned about it outside of quiz bowl. You may find it triggering or ludicrous, but “I suggest we talk about it like rational men.” is a phrase worth remembering when you find someone doing something they shouldn’t.
The Berlin Conference which basically drew and redrew the map of Africa.
Ytterby, town of periodic table wonder. 1 2 3 4
Stuff to Look At
A London Underground-style map of Roman Roads
A study of Raphael’s painting The School of Athens because the connections that Raphael was attempting to make in this has fueled hundreds of questions.
Stuff to Get Straight in Your Head
The first laughter after trauma is often explosive, unexpected and completely inappropriate. On September 15, 2001, I was still numb and working through things blindly to keep from vibrating out of my chair, when somewhere along the line I had to check whether the word trapezium or trapezoid was correct for a geometry problem, and I stumbled upon the fact that their meanings are switched between the US and UK. This fact was noted in the grammar guide with a long and strangely vituperative explanation of how the Americans had gotten it wrong, and how “vigilance must be paid” lest Britain descend into this particular anarcho-geometry. Well, when you’re in that state, such pedantry is the most hilarious thing you’ll ever see, and precisely the reset you need. I can’t promise this explanation will be quite as cleansing for you, but here’s trapezoid versus trapezium.
Stuff to Keep You From Bouncing Off the Walls
For those of you suddenly thrust into the role of homeschool education, I will recommend something for the spring to come. iNaturalist’s Seek is a smartphone app that allows you to identify plants by scanning them. Just get a good picture of the plant and it will identify the type of plant it is. Once the weather gets warm enough for spring flowers, you’ve got an activity to get you and the kid out of the house for a small-scale field trip to your backyard. I will confess to being bad at identifying the local plants, because I’ve always relied on my mother’s continuous study of her bookshelf of field guides, so this is a little handier than involving her.
Didn’t You Learn Anything From the Last Time?
And now we quiz you. Are these great art…no. They’re rough and unedited, but they’re questions that can be posed from last week’s reading. Remember me saying up above, set one achievable goal for each day….well, one question a day is certainly that. You’ve been handed more than ten articles, and those articles each can be used to create questions that can be for your own edification, that of your teammates, your students, people at your local, whomever. Don’t worry about the quality of your writing at first, worry about getting in the exercise: the routine of realizing what you just read is a good thing to know, and making it so you will remember it, and other people who read what you write will know it.
1
In 1935 it was converted from a mosque to a museum. For 10 points each--
A. Name this Istanbul landmark designed by Anthemius of Tralles which originally served as an Eastern Orthodox cathedral.
answer: Hagia Sophia
B. The Hagia Sophia was converted to a museum on orders from what first president of the Republic of Turkey.
answer: Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
C. These features, including one depicting Byzantine Emperor Justinian I were preserved by being plastered over in the conversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque.
answer: mosaics
2
Identify these various types of space rocks, for 10 points each:
A. Trojan varieties of these objects share an orbit with a larger body leading or lagging it by 60 degrees.
answer: asteroids
B. So-called "falling stars" are these highly visible objects as they combust in the atmosphere.
answer: meteors
C. The product of a meteor's descent into the atmosphere, the 60-ton Hoba is the largest example of these on Earth.
answer: meteorites
3
After securing a peace with Titus Tatius, he ordered the building of the temple of Jupiter Stator. For 10 points each--
A. Name this legendary founder of Rome.
answer: Romulus
B. Romulus quarreled with his brother Remus and each built a settlement. When Remus mocked the wall Romulus had built around this hill by jumping over it, Romulus killed him.
answer: Palatine Hill
C. According to Livy and Plutarch, Romulus was taken in to heaven accompanied by thunderclaps and became this protector god of Rome.
answer: Quirinus
4
The basic form of these desserts, simply heating white sugar until it browns is called caramel. For 10 points each--
A. This substance uses the same process as caramel, but combines brown sugar with butter.
answer: butterscotch
B. Dulce de leche uses cow's milk to create a richer product, but also often adds this substance, NaHCO3, to neutralize the acidity of the mixture.
answer: baking soda or sodium bicarbonate or sodium hydrogen carbonate
C. Dulce de leche flavor is enriched by this reaction, also found in browned toast, between amino acids and the sugars present.
answer: Maillard reaction
5
In one section of this poem, the mother retells the story of the Concheco Massacre. For 10 points each--
A. Name this long poem of a storm and its aftermath, subtitled A Winter Idyl by John Greenleaf Whittier.
answer: Snow-Bound
B. The retelling of the Concheco raid on the town of Dover, and mentions of Dartmouth's halls place Snow-Bound in this state where Whittier spent much of his later life.
answer: New Hampshire
C. The poem begins by quoting this other New England poet's The Snow Storm.
answer: Ralph Waldo Emerson