atropos

tgallows · Wed, 02 Aug 2000 16:09:05 -0700

Alright -- while the attempted change of thread
was a nice idea, the political thread is even less
pleasant to read than the previous one.

With regard
to the earlier thread, I don't think it's really
necessary to debate the artistic merits of rappers or Yanni
or whatever else. As a (perhaps mediocre) example, I
have no great affinity for Samuel Richardson novels
(having sifted through 900+ pages of Pamela in grad
school -- thankfully they didn't assign Clarissa!), but
I won't argue against their inclusion in a
tournament, regardless of my opinion of their artistic
merit.

I understand the argument of whoever it was that
first complained about the inclusion of rap questions,
but I wouldn't agree with the complaint in this case.
As long as the bulk of the questions are well
written and are roughly in line with the distribution
laid out by the TD, then I think anything is fair game
for the miscellaneous category. I recall being a bit
annoyed years ago at a CBI tournament after getting a
tossup on the Forever Your Girl album by Paula Abdul ...
in addition to the obvious embarassment of admitting
I knew the answer to that, it was one of many
trashy questions in the round and the tournament. The
question sets didn't provide good material for competition
between a couple of pretty good teams, and the Paula
Abdul question seemed typical of the whole set rather
than an exception. 
However, that criticism
certainly doesn't apply to the Chicago Open questions,
which were (I thought) excellent, and which were in the
prescribed proportions. And even the "trash" questions were
well written -- I certainly didn't mind losing a
singles tiebreaker to (a very polite) John Nam on a golf
question, since both the round as a whole and the
tiebreaking tossup were well written. Besides, virtually
anything is fair game at a masters
tournament.

Enough of that. I very much enjoyed the tournaments in
Chicago this weekend, and I look forward to competing
against some of you this fall. [[And please, pretty
please with sugar on top, don't start a new thread
arguing about the merits (or lack thereof) of Paula Abdul
or Samuel Richardson.]]

--Raj Dhuwalia