Week 14: It's not the 42nd floor lounge of the Marriott Marquis, but it's so much better than not doing it at all.
ctrl-C, ctrl-W, alt-tab, c, tab,tab, ctrl-V, Escape, alt-tab, repeat until morning
I started on this early this week. Not because I had something I really wanted to say that couldn't wait, but because I had something I hoped to be doing Wednesday. I've been waiting for this particular day for a while now, because it's going to be a task that will make things feel normal. Tomorrow is a press release day.
About ten years ago we started putting out press releases for championship tournaments. Two weeks before the event to entice local papers to cover their schools' teams as they traveled to Chicago or Atlanta, and after so that the papers would greet the teams on the way home. Sometimes this has worked out to a front page story, and sometimes it's resulted in the thud of finding out the reporter had just been fired. I've done this from the cushy concierge level at the tournament hotel, and from the seat of a torn out phonebooth at Midway before my midnight flight, and I'm always happy to do it, even if I am dead tired when I start it.
The press releases start with the tournament results on the NAQT site. I have to wait for the whole tournament to be complete and stats recorded. Then a routine Jonah wrote scans for patterns I asked it to find in every team's complete record: Was this team on the brink of elimination for most of the day? Did they play another team from their state? Did they win a game by 5 points? All of those patterns are noted, and appropriate sentences for each are generated. With those sentences then turned into paragraphs, each team's entire tournament story is told, and those stories get compiled in press releases. I take the big zip of files, and check that each makes sense as told (there's always one or two that need to be reworked because they just happened to hit a weird edge case that makes the whole thing read funny.) After that's done, I begin a furious series of keystrokes commands in gmail, and I send each team's press release to their local paper. After an hour, or a flight, or a night's sleep, I start handling the photo requests.
Tomorrow is the formal end of Buzzword Season 1, and we're planning to do the same thing for Middle School, High School, and College Divisions of that as we've done for our other championships. We missed the chance to bring publicity to local teams this year, but we're going to try our hardest to make sure that we bring publicity to individals in quiz bowl with this. And I’m happy to have something to do that feels like national championship work.
Stuff to See
Sea cucumbers and echinoderms
The Articles I Learned From This Week
All about noctilucent clouds 1 2
The comic book character Green Lantern
Alexander von Humboldt as told by Ken Jennings
This article on carbon dating doesn’t go into Willard Libby’s work, but does show an interesting way to use carbon dating on an inorganic compound.
The Articles You can Learn From This Week
Stockholm Syndrome and take a detour into the story of Patty Hearst, and you’ll find dozens of little threads that can be used to tie questions together.
The Bayeux Tapestry (which I didn’t cover in the book as much as I could, instead putting the focus on events of 1066)
One of my favorite countries to learn about is Paraguay. This article covers why a state of Paraguay is named after US President Rutherford B. Hayes
Yeats’ The Second Coming, I covered this in the book but this covers some things I didn’t include, and omits some things I did include.
This article on cherry blossoms in Washington DC covers parts of several of the shots I included in the book.
Didn’t You Learn Anything From the Last Time?
1
Part of the 1921 magnetic storm overloaded telegraph lines entering Grand Central Station, causing it to be termed the New York Railroad Superstorm.
A. These emissions from sunspot activity reached Earth's magnetic field and caused most of the issues with the 1921 event.
answer: coronal mass ejections or CMEs
B. The CME's led to these normally polar observed phenomena being recorded as far south as Central America.
answer: aurora borealis
C. The 1921 storm is now considered to be of the same magnitude of this 1859 disruption which caused telegraph lines to clack uncontrollably.
answer: Carrington Event
2
During April 2018 celebrations in Mbabane, the king of this nation announced a name change.
A. Give this new name of this nation, Africa's only remaining absolute monarchy, once known as Swaziland.
answer: eSwatini
B. The change was announced by this king of the Swazi people, during the nation's 50th anniversary celebrations.
answer: King Mswati III
C. eSwatini would likely retain the .sz top level domain, as .es has long been assigned to domains of this country
answer: Spain
3
Though often attributed to his friend, architect Christopher Wren, the design of a memorial to a 1666 event was the work of a scientist who wanted a place to build a telescope.
A. Name this scientist who developed a namesake law of elasticity.
answer: Robert Hooke
B. Name the 1666 event which Hooke memorialized, which required Wren's work in rebuilding buildings in London like St. Paul's Cathedral.
answer: Great Fire of London
C. Hooke named these units of life for their resemblence in a microscope to monk's quarters.
answer: cells
4
His final painting depicts him and his wife, Josephine Nivison, as commedia dell'arte characters.
A. Name this American Symbolist painter of works like "Early Sunday Morning" and "Nighthawks"
answer: Edward Hopper
B. Hopper was one of many painters trained by this organizer of "The Eight" and painter of the Ashcan School
answer: Robert Henri
C. The Hopper painting "The House by the Railroad" was used as the model for the Bates home in what Alfred Hitchock-directed film?
answer: Psycho
5
It was designed to be the deadliest ship on the Baltic Sea, and on its first and only voyage, it killed 30 members of its crew.
A. Name this ship which in 1628 tipped over in the strom and sank, only to be recovered from the bottom in 1961.
answer: Vasa
B. The Vasa was commissioned by this Swedish king.
answer: Gustavus Adolphus II
C. The Vasa was part of Gustavus Adolphus' attempt to win this war against the Hapsburgs in the north for the Protestant cause.
answer: Thirty Years' War