OK the ratio of women to men discussion is definitely both the dumbest and most sexist discussion I've seen on this board. But leaving that alone, I'd like to solicit feelings on the penultimate round for most teams at ACF nats (Chicago and Illinois excepted) written by Seth Kendall. Other than the irrelevant curiosity that a vast majority of his science questions began with the letter B (beryllium, bismuth, boron, Burgess shale, Berzelius, and no, someone else pointed that out to me), most of them also had something to do with the elements, leaving distribution requirements and common decency to science majors ignored. Aside from this sop to list memorization, the packet did seem to also have other curious facets. The math major amongst my teammates (you may know him as Farris) pointed out the curious focus on ancient curves unused for the most part in today's mathematics though I will not criticize that since my knowledge of that area is pitifully weak. I also won't comment on the literature questions (most of which since we were playing Chicago and had Joon "Get Mrs. Dalloway off six words" Pahk on our team we did not hear more than a few words of) but I leave that to anyone who wants to respond who actually heard them. Moreover, I will not say that another packet would have made that much of a difference with an opponent such as Chicago in the round but it clearly would have at least been more satisfying to play a great team on better questions. I'm open to the disagreement that accompanies all posts, especially those on this forum. And if Seth Kendall is out there, this is not a personal slight as my teammates made clear you were a great guy. Vik P.S. I didn't mean to insult the list memorizer class of quiz bowlers either since I too would do it if I could do it well enough that it would stick in my head.
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