Let’s preface this with Roddy Doyle’s advice about writing, which I saw this week:
“start with quantity and worry about the quality later”
When I was first invited to practices in college (sophomore year, 1992-93) I was struck by the giant yellow binder that one of the grad students had filled during their undergraduate career at Georgia Tech. It was easily 500 pages of handwritten and typewritered questions, that were written by him to get better both as a writer and as a player. That wasn't seen as an extraordinary practice for Georgia Tech of that era (but it kind of was). So I had to assume each of them had that as sort of average training regimen over their career. The binder was full of questions that only were used in practice; you may think that a ridiculous use, but please understand the time. Even a well-established team in a region with lots of teams would only be able to play maybe seven events in a year. The competition year ran almost exclusively from January to April. There wasn't a centralized system of tournaments, or an archive of old questions or a forum, or a calendar, or an email list. A binder like that could be full of practice questions because you there wasn't a constant demand for tournament packets, but there was for practice material, and with that came a need to polish your skill as a writer.
Just two years later, the equation of supply and demand in quiz bowl had changed dramatically. At that point, there were many more teams on the circuit, and they were connected via Usenet and email. And everybody wanted to host an event, because it was usually cheaper to host than travel. The calendar in 1994 opened up an entire semester earlier. And suddenly the balance of supply and demand shifted towards question demand. If you were a writer for your team, as I was, you were cranking out packets for every tournament near you (this era also predated the dominance of mirroring tournaments.) What you weren't doing was building a binder of practice questions, you simply didn't have time to accumulate questions in such a way.
Thinking about it now, my career as a player and as a writer were both supremely influenced by seeing both of those antiquated modes of question production in action. The big binder was the object lesson that to build your power in this game, committing to writing, not necessarily for any other audience than yourself is a powerful memory retention technique. And that brief period of massive demand before mirrors became the standard, created an environment where you had to be a productive writer just to get opportunities for your team to play.
What strikes me about that then is: Those competitors graduated, and with their training and skills picked up from a couple years of working hard to keep playing more, they wanted to contribute more. In quick succession, NAQT, TRASH, and PACE were founded, and to make up for the sudden loss of production caused by losing people to those groups, the circuit shifted to a mostly mirrored tournament system, and free archives were fully established. Those two actions may have made it easier to sustain a team, but maybe they also made it harder to build training habits.
The relevant point here is we could be heading into a similar situation. Online tournaments may produce mirrors, but because the average tournament host and reader will have to learn a new set of technologies to be useful if tournaments online become standard, there's going to be a much greater need for questions. But then once we return to face-to-face events returning, and more mirroring available, there will be a precipitous drop in the need for questions. The one dominant variable that has changed is the abundance of archive questions that have been created in the interim, and that may prove to change the overall demand.
Stuff to Read
The publisher Springer has offered up about 500 textbooks free to download until the end of July. This constitutes a large amount of course material you might be able to use.
Why is gravity not like the other fundamental forces?
The Articles I Learned from This Week
The Battle over the Prime Meridian
A tremendous unknown story about Thelonious Monk
The Duke of Wellington under threat of blackmail
The Articles You Could Learn from This Week
This summary of the former Yugoslavia is missing the name change to North Macedonia, but is still useful.
Quiz bowl tends to focus on three things when they mention the ancient city of Teotihuacán, the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon and the Avenue of the Dead between them. This article focuses on a different aspect of Teotihuacán, the murals which covered the city. And it also gives you a one-paragraph course on mineral pigments.
Though I mentioned it before I had gotten into it, I’ve been following the Canadian History Ehx podcast, and the segment on Diefenbunkers led me to recall the story of the Avro Arrow. What I didn’t know about it was how that failure led to a serious Canadian migration to work on the US space program.
This may have walked through the same territory as the Revolutions podcast did on the Haitian Revolution, but this account of Toussaint L’overture’s final imprisonment was surprising to me.
I’m including this article on Herman Melville’s Clarel not because of that work, but because of its coverage of Melville’s other works. As the literature canon has broadened out, Melville has become a bit of a two-hit wonder, with lots of stuff still on Moby-Dick and a little Billy Budd coverage, but the rest of his catalog forgotten. In quiz bowl circa 1995, one could make a case that an infographic Typee vs Omoo would have been necessary for most teams.
Didn’t You Learn Anything from Last Time?
1
The events which gave this condition its name occurred in a branch of Kreditbanken on Norrmalmstorg Square.
A. Name this condition where hostages become positively disposed to their captors.
answer: Stockholm Syndrome
B. Stockholm Syndrome is often cited in the case of this heiress kidnapped in 1974 who joined with her kidnappers on a bank robbery spree.
answer: Patricia (or Patty) Hearst
C. Hearst was kidnapped by this organization, led by Field Marshal Cinque, the nom de guerre of Donald DeFreeze, which attempted to unify all left-wing struggles.
answer: SLA or Symbionese Liberation Army
2
The large number of appearances of Bishop Odo, later Earl of Kent, despite having little to do with the events depicted in this artwork lends credence to the idea that he sponsored its creation.
A. Name this woven
answer: Bayeux Tapestry
B. The events of the Norman Conquest of England are shown in the Bayeux Tapestry, culminating in this battle which saw the end of the short reign of King Harold.
answer: Battle of Hastings
C. Another candidate for the sponsor of the Bayeux Tapestry was Matilda, wife of this Norman king who ascended to power in England after the Battle of Hastings.
answer: William I
3
During the Edo period, their image was associated in pictures with spring, and their short lifespan led them to be associated with warriors.
A. Name these fruit tree flowers, celebrated in viewing parties called hanami.
answer: cherry blossoms or sakura
B. A major sponsor of cherry blossom viewing parties, this "Great Unifier" of Japan ordered the planting of 700 trees near Daigoji Temple for a hanami spectacle.
answer: Toyotomi Hideyoshi
C. In 1912, Japan sent hundreds of cherry trees to this American city, where they have thrived in an area along the Tidal Basin.
answer: Washington DC
4
By arbitrating a dispute over land after a war, this US President became a legendary figure in the nation of Paraguay.
A. Name this president who succeeded Grant in office after a disputed 1876 election over Samuel Tilden.
answer: Rutherford B Hayes
B. A section of these lowlands between the Pilcomayo and Verde Rivers, termed by European settlers "the Green Hell", was given to Paraguay as a result of Hayes' arbitration.
answer: Gran Chaco
C. The arbitration was necessary to conclude this 1864 to 1870 war which Paraguay fought against Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay.
answer: War of the Triple Alliance
5
Their most notable feature is their response to stress, excreting organs and essentially turning themselves inside out.
A. Name these members of class Holothuroidea, named for their resemblance to a land vegetable.
answer: sea cucumbers
B. Sea cucumbers are members of this phylum which displays radial symmetry members of which includes starfish and sand dollars.
answer: echinodermata or echinoderms
C. Sea cucumbers perform their self-evisceration thanks to this collagen-laden tissue present in all echinoderms. By chemically loosening fibril structures, the collagen detaches organs from their body, permitting them being pushed out their anus.
answer: Mutable Collagenous Tissue or MCT