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Re: Friday, March 1, 2013 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2013 1:38 am
by whoisalexjacob
Congrats Milhouse! Solid work.

Re: Friday, March 1, 2013 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2013 2:04 am
by TryphonTournesol
Volante wrote:
TryphonTournesol wrote: I think you misunderstand me. The doubt over what the 1300 miles refers to is: does it refer to the distance between the territory and the EU country, or the distance between Canada and the EU country?
I would imagine you'd be hard pressed to find an EU country proper that's 1300 miles from Canada.
Maaaaaybe Iceland; I don't know a good place to jump off for arbitrary distance calculations on earth.

Edit: http://www.daftlogic.com/projects-googl ... ulator.htm
Looks like you CAN get Iceland to within ~1000 miles of Canada (Baffin Island) (I was eyeballing on a Mercator previously...so that was my first mistake...)
And you can connect the tippy top of Canada with the tippy top of Norway in 1400 miles, and anything past that it's all turtles.

But neither of those have territories abutting Canada either.
This is all true. I'm not saying Denmark wasn't the best answer. But the point is more that "this country is 1300 miles from a territory it has near Canada" is just not a great clue. A raw mileage figure as the only real hint? As I've said before, that suggests to me that the question writers didn't know about, or at least didn't think of, St. Pierre and Miquelon. Because if the question was written in their absence, the actual hint is "this EU country has a territory near Canada," and the mileage figure is only there to add the spice of "gosh, that territory sure is far away from the EU country!" Which makes a lot more sense as a clue. Raw mileage is just too esoteric, IMO.

Re: Friday, March 1, 2013 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2013 9:02 am
by alietr
jeff6286 wrote:Does anyone know how the programming works for sites like Google Maps? I brought up Greenland, zoomed out far enough to see Denmark, and used the miles scale on the screen to confirm that the 1,300 mile figure was an accurate number for the nearest distance between the two. I then used the same method to confirm that France was much further than that from its North American outpost. Would I actually get accurate readings using the scale shown on Google maps, or would their maps be similar to the Mercator projection and show vastly skewed dimensions of the areas near the poles? Basically I guess I'm asking, is the earth shown on Google Maps round or flat? The fact that the 1,300 miles seemed almost exactly right makes me think that I was seeing an accurate representation of Greenland and Denmark, but how exactly can they make the curved surface of the earth show up correctly on a flat screen?
I use Google Earth for that. It has a ruler (though I can't say I've used it for long distances like that).

Re: Friday, March 1, 2013 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2013 9:41 am
by marpocky
Volante wrote:
TryphonTournesol wrote: I think you misunderstand me. The doubt over what the 1300 miles refers to is: does it refer to the distance between the territory and the EU country, or the distance between Canada and the EU country?
I would imagine you'd be hard pressed to find an EU country proper that's 1300 miles from Canada.
Maaaaaybe Iceland; I don't know a good place to jump off for arbitrary distance calculations on earth.

Edit: http://www.daftlogic.com/projects-googl ... ulator.htm
Looks like you CAN get Iceland to within ~1000 miles of Canada (Baffin Island) (I was eyeballing on a Mercator previously...so that was my first mistake...)
And you can connect the tippy top of Canada with the tippy top of Norway in 1400 miles, and anything past that it's all turtles.

But neither of those have territories abutting Canada either.
This is probably immaterial to the point you were trying to make, but Iceland is not in the EU. (Neither is Norway.)

Re: Friday, March 1, 2013 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2013 9:56 am
by Volante
marpocky wrote:
Volante wrote:
TryphonTournesol wrote: I think you misunderstand me. The doubt over what the 1300 miles refers to is: does it refer to the distance between the territory and the EU country, or the distance between Canada and the EU country?
I would imagine you'd be hard pressed to find an EU country proper that's 1300 miles from Canada.
Maaaaaybe Iceland; I don't know a good place to jump off for arbitrary distance calculations on earth.

Edit: http://www.daftlogic.com/projects-googl ... ulator.htm
Looks like you CAN get Iceland to within ~1000 miles of Canada (Baffin Island) (I was eyeballing on a Mercator previously...so that was my first mistake...)
And you can connect the tippy top of Canada with the tippy top of Norway in 1400 miles, and anything past that it's all turtles.

But neither of those have territories abutting Canada either.
This is probably immaterial to the point you were trying to make, but Iceland is not in the EU. (Neither is Norway.)
:oops: I got too engrossed in manipulating the map to even give that a passing thought, so, yeah, all turtles between Canada and the EU.

Re: Friday, March 1, 2013 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2013 10:33 am
by Vanya
Turtles in the Arctic?

Re: Friday, March 1, 2013 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2013 11:39 am
by ComingUpMilhouse
cinemaniax7 wrote:
bpmod wrote:And while we're on the subject, why can't you take a picture of an arrogant jerk with a wooden leg?
Hmm. You've got me stumped.

Sara, you're a lot of fun to watch. So how many times has someone used the New Girl adjective "adorkable" to describe you?
I haven't been keeping track, although it seems to be the adjective of choice for people on twitter who aren't weirdos (a friend has been forwarding some of the highlights). Clearly I should have brought one of the make-up artists back from the studio with me, although the LA to Hickory Corners transition might be a bit much for them.

On a related note (at least, related to the "dork" part), one of my friends from middle and high school reminded me that not only did I compete on regular QuizBusters, but we were also on the year they decided to start doing a middle school version. It was at least some nice validation that I've gotten better at dressing myself since then. What an awkward time.

Re: Friday, March 1, 2013 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2013 11:49 am
by Vanya
ComingUpMilhouse wrote: I haven't been keeping track, although it seems to be the adjective of choice for people on twitter who aren't weirdos
And how big of a group is that?

Re: Friday, March 1, 2013 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2013 11:58 am
by ComingUpMilhouse
Vanya wrote:
ComingUpMilhouse wrote: I haven't been keeping track, although it seems to be the adjective of choice for people on twitter who aren't weirdos
And how big of a group is that?
It does not seem to be the majority.

Re: Friday, March 1, 2013 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2013 1:35 pm
by Dr. J
ComingUpMilhouse wrote:
Vanya wrote:
ComingUpMilhouse wrote: I haven't been keeping track, although it seems to be the adjective of choice for people on twitter who aren't weirdos
And how big of a group is that?
It does not seem to be the majority.
And don't forget the a-holes. (I'll take weirdos over a-holes almost any day of the week.)
I, too, wish I could have those wonderful makeup pros at my disposal. However, the gals at Sephora are pretty darn good, too. Treat yourself, Sara -- you deserve to look adorable all the time! Congrats on the big coin for three wins; can't wait to see how much more you add to it!!

Re: Friday, March 1, 2013 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2013 2:03 pm
by John Boy
skullturf wrote:
TenPoundHammer wrote:Do any of YOU put down an answer that every single cell in your body is screaming "no, that's absolutely friggin' wrong, don't you dare put it down"?
Yes! Absolutely!

I have a little rule for myself. When I play along at home, I make myself write down something for Final Jeopardy. No matter how lost or clueless I am, I write something down, no matter how silly it is, or how much of a stab in the dark it is.

Sure, some wrong answers might look embarrassing after the fact. But it cannot be stressed enough: as far as gameplay is concerned, there is literally nothing worse than a blank response for FJ.

Let me share some of my embarrassing wrong responses from recent weeks.

January 21st, category "Museums". "Opened in 2012, the Belfast museum seen here commemorates this, also constructed there." I was really kicking myself afterward with this one. For some reason, I couldn't make the leap from the word "constructed" to a vehicle of some kind that wouldn't necessarily stay in Belfast forever. My brain wouldn't make that "leap" and I was stuck on castles, fortresses, walls, monuments, etc. What I actually wrote down was "The Pale" because I think that was the name of some kind of wall or barrier or something like that separating Northern Ireland from the rest of Ireland. (I have no idea how accurate that is, but it was a vague notion in my head at the time.)

January 31st, category "Fundraising". "In 2011 the city of Savannah granted an exemption allowing the sale of these items outside Juliette Gordon Low's birthplace." There was a crucial gap in my factual knowledge: I didn't know who Juliette Gordon Low was. I knew that probably if I knew who she was, that would likely make the question easy, but I simply didn't know. So I quickly thought to myself, "Geez, why would there be an item that's sold in some places but not in others?" All I could think of was an item that's controversial for some reason. So, for lack of anything better, I wrote down "Confederate Flags". Which makes no sense for several reasons. For one, they're not associated with fundraising.

The point is, writing down something silly, that only vaguely fits part of the clue, but doesn't really make sense when you consider the larger context, is still better than leaving it blank. Writing down something silly, fully expecting it to be wrong, is no worse than leaving it blank. My two wild guesses given above, silly and wrongheaded as they were, at least were the names of real things that existed, meaning that there was some kind of tiny infinitesimal chance that they could be correct. Whereas a blank answer is unequivocally, unmistakably, undisputably guaranteed to be wrong.

The vet just left. He said the horse was dead, so we can stop.