text:
_Melanie has a BS in physical science and is in grad school for analytics and modeling. Her research is in computational chemistry._

[On April 15th, 1912, "the ship of dreams" collided with an iceberg and sank. This resulted in over 1,500 crew and passenger deaths. ]
On April 15th, 1912, "the ship of dreams" collided with an iceberg and sank. This resulted in over 1,500 crew and passenger deaths.

It's well-known that the Titanic sank as a result of a collision with an iceberg, but what you might not know is _where_ it sank. Where exactly was the Titanic when she plunged below the ocean's surface? What was her last port of call? Where was she headed? How far was she from her final destination when she sank?

When Did the Titanic Sink?

The Titanic disembarked on her maiden voyage on April 10th, 1912. Mere days later, the ship collided with an iceberg. Sometime in the early morning hours of April 15th, she slipped under the icy waters (which were roughly 28° F) of the North Atlantic. Over 1,500 passengers and crew (including the captain) perished.

When Was the Wreckage Located?

It took researchers years to find the Titanic's wreckage. She was not seen again until September of 1985 when researchers on the vessel _Knorr_ were able to identify debris from the ship's boilers.

[This is the last known photo of RMS Titanic. It was taken on April 12th, 1912 during the vessel's maiden voyage.]
This is the last known photo of RMS Titanic. It was taken on April 12th, 1912 during the vessel's maiden voyage.

Where Was the Titanic Found?

Research teams were initially hindered by the fact that the Titanic's final resting place was nowhere near the location of her last distress call. After searching for the wrecked vessel for some time, Dr. Robert Ballard found the first remnants 13 miles southeast of the location of the final distress call.

As it turns out, the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean roughly 400 miles (640 km) southeast of the coast of Newfoundland. The bow of the ship was found at 41°43'57" N, 49°56'49" W and the stern was located at 41°43'35" N, 49°56'54" W.

[This is a photo of an iceberg found on April 15th, 1912, close to where the Titanic sank.]

[This is a photo of an iceberg found on April 15th, 1912, close to where the Titanic sank.]

[A streak of red paint left scraped along the base of one of the icebergs indicated that it had collided with a vessel within the previous 12 hours.]

This is a photo of an iceberg found on April 15th, 1912, close to where the Titanic sank.

Where Is the Titanic's Wreckage?

As the Titanic was sinking, the bow and stern separated as a result of structural stresses on the ship. This caused the vessel's contents to be strewn across the ocean floor in a debris field spanning roughly 2000 feet.

The bow of the Titanic, which comprises the largest piece of the wreckage, was found at 41°43'57" N, 49°56'49" W. The ship's stern was located at 41°43'35" N, 49°56'54" W. The final resting place of the ship's boilers was at 41°43'32" N, 49°56'49" W. The Titanic made her final distress call from 41°46' N, 50°14' W.

[This is a photograph of Titanic's bow taken in June 2004]
This is a photograph of Titanic's bow taken in June 2004

Where Was the Titanic Going?

The Titanic started her journey in Southampton, England headed toward Cherbourg, France. From Cherbourg, the Titanic sailed to Cobh (then known as Queenstown), Ireland. After leaving Cobh—her final port of call—the Titanic made her maiden voyage across the Atlantic bound for New York, USA.

How Far Was the Titanic From Her Destination When She Sank?

By the time she collided with the iceberg, the Titanic had already covered more than half of her journey from Cobh and was set to dock at Pier 59 in New York on April 17th, 1912. The ill-fated voyage across the icy waters ended approximately 1000 miles from New York. The Titanic was within mere hours of the Lightship Ambrose and only about 375 miles due south of Newfoundland when she had her fateful rendezvous with the drifting chunk of ice that caused her demise.

[This photo of the Titanic embarking on her maiden voyage was taken on April 10th, 1912.]
This photo of the Titanic embarking on her maiden voyage was taken on April 10th, 1912.

How Deep Is the Titanic's Wreckage?

The Titanic currently rests in mud and sediment on the ocean floor approximately 12,415 feet (2.35 miles) below the surface. That's incredibly deep! The pressure and frigid temperature at this depth make exploration and excavation efforts extremely difficult, dangerous, and costly.

Map of the Titanic's Route

What Is Being Done to Preserve The Titanic's Remains?

While freezing cold temperatures have, to some extent, helped preserve the Titanic, she is nevertheless starting to decay and fall apart. Roofs have begun to cave-in, decks have started to grow weaker, and the stern may soon collapse. Because of this, many deep-sea expedition teams are doing what they can to help preserve the ship.

The vessel is currently undergoing sonar mapping, which will later be used to form a 3D replica of the wreckage. This replica will be used by scientists in order to better study the ship.

Perhaps someday, we will have the technology to bring both the bow and stern of the Titanic to the surface. Currently, many objects from the ship, including coal, metal, dishes, and items owned by the ship's passengers are being recovered and brought to the surface. Imagine being able to see the ship in its entirety!

References

-   _Official investigation report - the sinking of RMS Titanic_ (PDF) (1 ed.). London: The final board of inquiry. Retrieved 4 Feb 2018.
-   Ballard, Robert D. (1987). _The Discovery of the_ Titanic. New York: Warner Books.
-   Ballard, Robert D.; Hively, Will (2002). The Eternal Darkness: A Personal History of Deep-Sea Exploration. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
-   "Titanic Ship Listing". Chris' Cunard Page. Retrieved 4 Feb 2018.

Questions & Answers

QUESTION: Where is the Titanic now?

ANSWER: The Titanic is still at the bottom of the ocean, in its final resting place.

© 2012 MELANIE

KILL KILL on August 24, 2020:

I just watched a movie in a hotel and it’s Actually true

ANNIE B. on March 24, 2020:

thank you so much for this. im doing a report over the titanic and this was super helpful! :)

SARAH REMMEL on April 16, 2019:

I know, all about-the, RMS Titanic. I read books, about it, & I own, lots of, Titanic DVDs, books, & I, own the, 1997 movie, on video, & DVD, I also, saw the, Titanic musical, way back in, the year 2000. I really liked, reading this, Titanic article. It is, very interesting, reading about, the RMS Titanic.

FAYE CONSTANTINO from Florida on September 04, 2012:

Very interesting article! There was a lot of information that I didn't know!

MISS KATE000 on June 02, 2012:

I love reading stuff about the Titanic, i don't know what it is about it, just has always fascinated me. Interesting article.

CURIAD on May 09, 2012:

This is a very interesting hub. As for the question of why the ship rests 13 miles from the last point of radio communication I think is because given the depth of the ocean there, 13000+ feet the parts of the ship would have drifted with the prevailing currents many miles on the way down to the bottom.

ANNA from New York, NY on May 09, 2012:

Very interesting hub! I thought I knew everything there is to know about the Titanic since I was actually one of those teens who saw the movie X amount of time at the movie theater (too embarrassed to disclose the number, lol!) and then I read books about it and my family and I happened to go on a cruise the following summer up north where one of the stops was in Halifax, so of course I explored the Titanic exhibition and went to the cemetery, amazed to have found a grave belonging to a Jack Dawson. I didn't know though that the ship made stops in France and Ireland before heading to NY. I recently heard that an exact replica of the Titanic is being built and will set sail in 2016!

DAISY MARIPOSA from Orange County (Southern California) on May 09, 2012:

Melanie,

Thanks for publishing another well-researched, well-written Hub. I've read other articles about the disaster, but I learned some new things from your Hub.

TERESA COPPENS from Ontario, Canada on May 03, 2012:

my family visited athe naval museum in Halifax where there is a rather extensive Titanic exhibit. it was amazing and extremely icompelling. One of the cemeteries in Halifax was the burial site for many of the victims including an unidentified infant who still receives mementoes laid by the gravesite. Interesting and timely hub Mel. They just had a hundred year memorial of the disaster in Halifax.

DIOGENES from UK and Mexico on May 01, 2012:

Good treatment of this evergreen subject. Some friends just went to the site on a cruise and stopped above where she went down and held a service.

Great movie, too.

Bob

WOWSITE1234 from Moncks Corner, SC on May 01, 2012:

Great Article. Can't wait to see the mechanics of the new Titanic.

KELLY UMPHENOUR from St. Louis, MO on April 30, 2012:

Awesome Mel! I love the Titanic - one of mu daughters is absolutely fascinated with it. She's read a lot about it and seen the movie several times. I wish they would have the exhibit at our Science Center again - I'd love to take her. I took her to see the exhibit for a Pirate ship exhibit and ship wreckage - it was pretty cool. She loved it!

I am going to let her read your hub after school I know she will find it really neat! Thanks!

BRITTANY KENNEDY from Kailua-Kona, Hawaii on April 30, 2012:

It's always been a dream of mine to visit the wreckage of some sunken ship in a submarine. Although the devastating events that caused the Titanic to sink are grim to think about, I really enjoyed reading your hub and dreaming about seeing the submerged remains of such a historical event. It saddens me to think that I would be damaging the ship by visiting it, so it's cool that you added such interesting photos to accompany this well-written hub.

Excellent hub, Mel! Voted up, shared, etc.

STEPHANIE MARSHALL from Bend, Oregon on April 30, 2012:

Very cool Hub! Lots of great information on the Titanic's current location and why she remains at the bottom of the ocean. Rated up!

THOUGHTSANDWICHES from Reno, Nevada on April 30, 2012:

hi melbel,

Interesting information. I understand that quite a bit of the damage has been caused by site seers. Some of the structural damage was caused when a wedding couple got married on a submarine which landed on the deck (thus crushing it). There is a plan afoot to paint the ship with a special type of paint that will help preserve it.

Great job,

Thomas

PS...did you hear about the rich-assed Australian dude who is building a Titanic II? He announced it today.

question: What does the text say about cold temperatures?

human_answer: The Titanic sank in freezing waters in the North Atlantic after it struck an iceberg. The ocean was roughly 28 degrees Fahrenheit. The Titanic's wreckage is 12,415 below the surface. The pressure and frigid temperatures at this depth make exploration and excavation efforts very challenging. A positive to the freezing temperatures are that they have helped preserve the Titanic to an extent. The temperatures haven't totally stopped it from beginning to decay however.

text: Specify that the freezing temperatures have only helped to preserve the Titanic to an extent. The ship is now beginning to fall apart.

answer: The Titanic sank in freezing waters in the North Atlantic after it struck an iceberg. The ocean was roughly 28 degrees Fahrenheit. The Titanic's wreckage is 12,415 below the surface. The pressure and frigid temperatures at this depth make exploration and excavation efforts very challenging. A positive to the freezing temperatures are that they have preserved the Titanic.

text: The answer should mention that the cold temperatures are helping preserve the Titanic.

text: The answer should mention the cold temperatures of the Atlantic.

text: The question asks about cold temperatures, not the Titanic.

text: The text doesn't say that the freezing temperatures are a positive thing.

text: The answer is not clear on what it is saying about the cold temperatures helping preserve the Titanic.

text: The answer should mention their efforts to preserve the Titanic, before that the destruction over 100 years has been largely due to freezing temperatures.

text: cold temperatures have helped preserve the Titanic just to some extent

text: The answer says the sheep is 12,415 below the surface but should say 12,415 feet

answer: The Titanic sank in freezing waters in the North Atlantic after it struck an iceberg. The ocean was roughly 28 degrees Fahrenheit. The Titanic's wreckage is 12,415 below the surface. The pressure and frigid temperatures at this depth make exploration and excavation efforts very challenging. A positive to the freezing temperatures are that they have preserved the Titanic.

answer: The Titanic sank in the icy waters of the North Atlantic, which were roughly 28° F. The freezing cold temperatures have helped preserve the Titanic. The frigid temperature at the depth of the ocean where the Titanic rests makes exploration and excavation efforts extremely difficult, dangerous, and costly.

text: The answer should mention the iceberg.

text: The answer should mention the temperature of the ocean where the Titanic sank.

text: The answer should mention that the cold temperatures are the reason why the Titanic sank.

text: The answer should mention the cold temperatures of the ocean.

text: The answer should mention that the cold temperatures helped preserve the wreckage.

text: The answer should mention the cold temperatures in relation to the iceberg.

text: In addition to the freezing cold temperatures, the frigid temperature at the depth of the ocean where the Titanic rests makes exploration and excavation efforts extremely difficult, dangerous, and costly.

text: The sentence about the sinking of the Titanic is not relevant

answer: The Titanic sank in the icy waters of the North Atlantic, which were roughly 28° F. The freezing cold temperatures have helped preserve the Titanic. The frigid temperature at the depth of the ocean where the Titanic rests makes exploration and excavation efforts extremely difficult, dangerous, and costly.


text:
Summer seminar UPC TelecomBCN (July 4-8, 2016)

Deep learning technologies are at the core of the current revolution in artificial intelligence for multimedia data analysis. The convergence of big annotated data and affordable GPU hardware has allowed the training of neural networks for data analysis tasks which had been addressed until now with hand-crafted features. Architectures such as convolutional neural networks, recurrent neural networks and Q-nets for reinforcement learning have shaped a brand new scenario in signal processing. This course will cover the basic principles and applications of deep learning to computer vision problems, such as image classification, object detection or text captioning.

Course Instructors

  [Xavier Giro-i-Nieto]      [Elisa Sayrol]      [AmaiaSalvador]       [Jordi Torres]      [Eva Mohedano]      [Kevin McGuinness]
  -------------------------- ------------------- --------------------- ------------------- ------------------- -----------------------
  Xavier Giro-i-Nieto (XG)   Elisa Sayrol (ES)   Amaia Salvador (AS)   Jordi Torres (JT)   Eva Mohedano (EM)   Kevin McGuinness (KM)

Teaching assistants

  [Junting Pan]   [Míriam Bellver]   [AlbertJimenez]   [Andrea Ferri]   [Alberto Montes]   [Maurici Yagües]
  --------------- ------------------ ----------------- ---------------- ------------------ ------------------
  Junting Pan     Míriam Bellver     Albert Jiménez    Andrea Ferri     Alberto Montes     Maurici Yagües

Organizers

  [logo-etsetb]           [logo-gpi]                   [logo-upc]                                   [logo-bsc]                        [logo-insight]                      [logo-dcu]
  ----------------------- ---------------------------- -------------------------------------------- --------------------------------- ----------------------------------- ------------------------------
  UPC ETSETB TelecomBCN   UPC Image Processing Group   Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC)   Barcelona Supercomputing Center   Insight Centre for Data Analytics   Dublin City University (DCU)

Lecture Slides and Videos

  Topic                        Speaker   Slideshare   YouTube
  ---------------------------- --------- ------------ ---------
  D1L1 Welcome                 XG        Slides
  D1L2 Classification          EM        Slides
  D1L3 Deep networks           ES        Slides
  D1L4 Backward Propagation    ES        Slides       Video
  D1L5 Training                EM        Slides
  D1L6 Software Frameworks     KM        Slides       Video
  D2L1 Memory & Computation    KM        Slides       Video
  D2L2 Data Augmentation       EM        Slides
  D2L3 Visualization           AS        Slides       Video
  D2L4 Imagenet Challenge      XG        Slides
  D2L5 Transfer & Adaptation   KM        Slides       Video
  D2L6 Recurrent Networks      XG        Slides       Video
  D3L1 Unsupervised Learning   KM        Slides       Video
  D3L2 Saliency Prediction     ES        Slides
  D3L3 Optimization            KM        Slides
  D3L4 Object Detection        AS        Slides       Video
  D3L5 Face Recognition        ES        Slides       Video
  D3L6 Image retrieval         EM        Slides       Video
  D4L1 Generative Models       KM        Slides
  D4L2 Segmentation            AS        Slides       Video
  D4L3 Language and Vision     XG        Slides       Video
  D4L4 Video Analytics         XG        Slides       Video
  D4L5 Medical Imaging         ES        Slides       Video
  D4L6 Attention Models        AS        Slides       Video
  D5L Closing                  XG        Slides

Hands on TensorFlow

The seminar includes five practical sessions on TensorFlow, the Open Source Software Library for Machine Intelligence developed by Google. These sessions were taught by Professor Jordi Torres, with the teaching assistance of Maurici Yagües. Both of them are part of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC).

  Topic
  -------------------------- --------
  D1T Linear regressor       Slides
  D2T Clustering             Slides
  D3T Neuron & Tensorboard   Slides
  D4T CNN & SLIM             Slides
  D5T RNN                    Slides

The full course with code snippets is available in this repo.

Student projects

Master students together with some bachelor students organized in teams of five members who solved four directed tasks and developed an open project. The duration of the project corresponds to the single week of the course. Their slides and source code is available from their repos. If you are interested in hiring or contacting the students, some of them have provided their LinkedIn profiles from their project pages.

  Team     Project                                 Page   Slides   Repo
  -------- --------------------------------------- ------ -------- ------
  Team 1   Character autorotation + Autoencoders   Web    Slides   Repo
  Team 2   Neural Style                            -      Slides   Repo
  Team 3   Generative Adversarial Network          -      Slides   Repo
  Team 4   Multi-layer Neural Style                -      Slides   Repo
  Team 5   Deep Dream                              -      Slides   Repo

Schedule

  When        Monday 4          Tuesday 5       Wednesday 6     Thursday 7      Friday 8
  ----------- ----------------- --------------- --------------- --------------- ----------------
  3:00-3:20   Welcome           Memory          Unsupervised    Adversarial     Project Expo 3
  3:20-3:40   Classification    Augmentation    Saliency        Segmentation    Project Expo 4
  3:40-4:00   Deep              Visualization   Optimization    Language        Project Expo 5
  4:00-5:00   TensorFlow        TensorFlow      TensorFlow      TensorFlow      TensorFlow
  4:00-5:00   Project           Project         Project         Project         Closing 3,4,5
  5:00-5:20   Backpropagation   ImageNet        Objects         Video           Project Expo 1
  5:20-5:40   Training          Transfer        Faces           Medical         Project Expo 2
  5:40-6:00   Frameworks        Recurrent       Ranking         Attention       Break
  6:00-7:00   Project           Project         Project         Project         Closing 1,2
  6:00-7:00   TensorFlow        TensorFlow      TensorFlow JT   TensorFlow JT   TensorFlow

Practical

-   Course code: 230360 (Phd & master) / 230324 (Bachelor)
-   ECTS credits: 2.5 (Phd & master) / 2 (bachelor) (corresponds to FULL-TIME DEDICATION during the week course)
-   Teaching language: English
-   The course is offered for both master and bachelor students, but under two study programmes adapted to each profile.
-   Class Dates: 4-8 July, 2016
-   Class Schedule: 3-7pm (you will need 6 extra hours a day for homework during the week course)
-   Capacity: 14 MSc students + 16 BSc students
-   Location: Campus Nord UPC, Module D5, Room 010

Registration

Registration is SOLD OUT for this edition of the seminar. The 30 available seats were covered by UPC TelecomBCN students.

We greatly appreciate the interest of several other students who could not register. We are planning a new edition of this seminar for June-July 2017. A new seminar on Deep Learning for Speech and Language is also planned for January 2017.

You are also encouraged to share your questions and solution in the public issues section for future reference and quality improvement of the course.

Video recordings

Sessions will be recorded in video and posted afterwards, together with the slides.

This term we will be using Piazza for class discussion. The system is highly catered to getting you help fast and efficiently from classmates, the TA, and myself. Rather than emailing questions to the teaching staff, I encourage you to post your questions on Piazza. If you have any problems or feedback for the developers, email team@piazza.com.

Find us at the class page.

-   Fei-Fei Li, Andrej Karpathy, Justin Johnson, “CS231n: Convolutional Neural Networks for Visual Recognition”. Stanford University, Spring 2016.
-   Sanja Fidler, “Deep Learning in Computer Vision”. University of Toronto, Winter 2016.
-   Hugo Larochelle, “Neural Networks”. Université de Sheerbroke.
-   Joan Bruna, “Stats212b: Topics on Deep Learning”. Berkeley University. Spring 2016.
-   Yann LeCun, “Deep Learning: Nine Lectures at Collège de France”. Collège de France, Spring 2016. [Facebook page]
-   Dhruv Batra, “ECE 6504: Deep learning for perception”. Virginia Tech, Fall 2015.
-   Vincent Vanhoucke, Arpan Chakraborty, “Deep Learning”. Google 2016.
-   Xavier Giro-i-Nieto, “Deep learning for computer vision: Image, Object, Videos Analytics and Beyond”. LaSalle URL. May 2016.
-   German Ros, Joost van de Weijer, Marc Masana, Yaxing Wang, “Hands-on Deep Learning with Matconvnet”. Computer Vision Center (CVC) 2015.

Acknowledgements

question: Summarize what is taught in the seminar.

text: The answer implies that Google might be teaching the mentioned applications, which is wrong. Google is the developer of TensorFlow; they aren't teaching the seminar.

category: accuracy

answer: The seminar teaches deep learning architectures used for data analysis and how to train them. Particular examples are convolutional networks, recurrent networks, and Q-nets. The course also covers computer vision applications like image classification, object detection, and text captioning with TensorFlow by Google.

answer_source: Human misleading

text: "and text captioning with TensorFlow by Google." - TensorFlow by Google is not mentioned in the text. The answer should stop at captioning.

answer: The seminar covers the basic principles and applications of deep learning to computer vision problems, such as image classification, object detection, and text captioning. The seminar also includes five practical sessions on TensorFlow, the Open Source Software Library for Machine Intelligence developed by Google.

answer_source: Model

answer: The seminar covers the basic principles and applications of deep learning to computer vision problems, such as image classification, object detection, and text captioning. The seminar also includes five practical sessions on TensorFlow, the Open Source Software Library for Machine Intelligence developed by Google.

text: The answer should mention the instructors.

text: The answer should mention the course instructors.

text: The answer could be more specific about what deep learning is.

text: It's omitted that the seminar is taught by Xavier Giro-i-Nieto, Elisa Sayrol, Amaia Salvador, Jordi Torres, Eva Mohedano, and Kevin McGuinness.

text: The answer should mention the instructors and assistants.

text: The answer omits the instructor, student projects, and schedule.

answer: The seminar teaches deep learning architectures used for data analysis and how to train them. Particular examples are convolutional networks, recurrent networks, and Q-nets. The course also covers computer vision applications like image classification, object detection, and text captioning with TensorFlow by Google.

text: The answer should mention the practical sessions on TensorFlow.

text: The second sentence is a bit confusing. It would be better to say that the course covers the basic principles and applications of deep learning to computer vision problems.

text: This is a good response, but it needs to be cleaned up a bit.

text: The answer should mention that the course is focused on deep learning technologies.

text: The course also teaches how to use TensorFlow.

text: Mention that the seminar also goes over training neural networks.

category: coverage

text:
The answer should correct the first sentence by saying that the course is focused on deep learning technologies.
'The course also covers computer vision applications...' Change "applications" to "problems" as it appears in the text.

category: coherence

answer: The seminar includes several deep learning (DL) architectures used for data analysis and how to train them. Particular examples are convolutional networks, recurrent networks, and Q-nets. The course also covers computer vision applications like image classification, object detection, and text captioning. There are also five sessions on practical uses of TensorFlow, an open-source library developed by Google.

answer_source: Human

text: The answer could mention the instructors.

text: The course is a summer seminar, not a seminar.

text: The instructor is omitted.

text: "Particular examples are convolutional networks, recurrent networks, and Q-nets." - this doesn't make sense as it stands. Add "architectures" and "which are"

text: The instructors are omitted.

answer: The seminar includes several deep learning (DL) architectures used for data analysis and how to train them. Particular examples are convolutional networks, recurrent networks, and Q-nets. The course also covers computer vision applications like image classification, object detection, and text captioning. There are also five sessions on practical uses of TensorFlow, an open-source library developed by Google.


text:
The world's best interviews. The world's best lubes.

Interested in watching all of our Brass Chats Teasers?  They're right here:

 May 10, 2020/ Joel Baroody
The world-famous Canadian Brasscame to play in Hartford, Connecticut this past winter, and the Monster boys were fortunate enough to snag some tickets. Obviously, seeing the Canadian Brass is a bucket-list concert item—and if you haven’t checked that box, when all of the sheltering-in-place is behind us, do it!!—but even COOLER was the fact that Charles Daellenbach (tuba player/performer extraordinaire and founding member of The Canadian Brass) sat down with us after the show for a beer and a chat!

The gracious Mr. Daellenbach was generous with his time and shared so much. You’ll hear great stories, all the way from Arnold Jacobs to tales from the road (like headlining a….hang on…..Country and Western Festival?!).

As with each of the Brass Chats, there’s plenty here that stays with you after the interview, and lots of ideas that you can start to implement the minute you finish watching. Charles tells us about why many freelancers fail to find work, how ideas are everywhere all the time for the taking, how to put on a show without selling out, and much more.

We hope you enjoy! Love,

Tom, Chris, and Joel—Monsters.

 February 24, 2020 February 24, 2020/ Joel Baroody
If your supplemental musical web surfing has not brought you into the path of this month’s Brass Chatter, you’re probably living in a house made of rocks and need to go out back to see if the pterodactyl holding your internet connection in place is still alive. Test it by poking him with a stick, and once he (this is a Flintstones joke kids, stick with us for a sec) looks at the fourth wall and says “hey….it’s a livin!” ….you’ll know the problem is fixed. Now that your connection is fixed and you’ve gone back inside under your rock roof and sat down in your rock chair, we have two jobs for you:

Job One: watch this Brass Chat! Michael is a dude who….just knows. You name it and he’s played it, and you’ll hear about a bunch of it here, from playing with the Rolling Stones to Buddy Rich to Broadway. You’ll also get to learn how he built his business from the ground up, what his most moving performance was, his thoughts on learning how to improvise, and the most important element to his success. Speaking of that…..

Job Two: start exploring the boundless universe of amazing things that our friend MICHAEL DAVIS! has created! Your jumping-off-point is hip-bonemusic.com, where you’ll find yourself up to your eyeballs in books, instructional videos, online lessons, and other treasures. You should also check out his fabulous interview series called Bone2Pick.

Michael is a huge inspiration to all of us in the brass world, and he was one of our funnest and funniest interviews we’ve ever done. We hope to get him back on for round 2 someday. Until then: this interview was a ridiculously easy edit—-there was so much amazing stuff in there that we basically kept everything. So, enjoy!

Love,

Joel, Tom, Chris - Monsters.

 January 01, 2020 January 01, 2020/ Joel Baroody
Happy New Year everybody! Thanks for being Brass Chats fans. Exciting stuff to come this year! Okay, enough of that——on to this month:

Remember last month when we opened with “Michael Sachs is….not like us”? Well…..had we interviewed this month’s guest first, he definitely would’ve gotten that sentence. JACK SUTTE! Is……Not. Like. Us. (In a good way but) Not. Like. Us.

Tune up the video to feast upon stories about his first day on the job in Cleveland back in 1999, playing TOMASI—in high school 🤮🤮🤮—and if your screen doesn’t recognize those, they were barfing faces—, why he doesn’t have a DAILY ROUTINE (?!), and how he switches between playing orchestral 2nd trumpet and the MOST CHALLENGING SOLO REPERTOIRE EVER WRITTEN. He’s on a quest to record every trumpet sonata in existence, and we are not joking, so if you want to troll him, WRITE SOME MORE TRUMPET SONATAS SO HE’LL NEVER FINISH. …but he’s damn close, so get moving!

Speaking of getting moving: it’s our hope that this month’s (and every month’s) Brass Chat is part of the tonic you need to motivate, inspire, and encourage you down on your paths of musical productivity in the new decade. We have big goals, and so do you. Thanks Jack Sutte, for helping us take the first step!!

Love you all,

Joel, Tom, Chris - Monsters.

 November 28, 2019 November 28, 2019/ Joel Baroody
Michael Sachs is….not like us.

HIS TRUMPET SOUND is comprised of equal parts pure molten gold, Old-Testament-fire-and-fury, new puppy fur, goose-pimple-shivers, maple syrup, Mahler’s image of heaven, heartbreak, and electrocution; OUR SOUNDS are comprised of equal parts desperation and diarrhea. HE’S spent more hours deciphering voodoo elements and tweaks of trumpet construction (MANY details in the interview, that you can try!!!!) than WE’VE spent actually playing the trumpet…..HE knows how to approach James Stamp exercises, and WE, as it turns out…….don’t.

Want to learn how to play Stamp? You’ve come to the right place!

Want to learn some trumpet tweaks that you can do, today, to make your horn play better? You’re about to listen to the right guy! (…it’s a wormhole, but it’s worth it!)

Want to hear what a big-5 principal learned from watching Nolan Ryan (one of the greatest pitchers of all time) warm up? Hit that play button.

Hanging with Michael Sachs was an absolute treat, and he was generous with his time and info—we’ll hit him up again someday, because the hour wasn’t nearly enough!

Happy Thanksgiving! We love you all and we’re thankful to all our Brass Chats guests, thankful that we get to do this, and thankful that you like watching.

Love,

Monsters

 April 20, 2019 April 20, 2019/ Joel Baroody
From the desk of Tom Brown, 1/3rd of Monster Oil:

“It was 1998.  I had just finished up my undergraduate degree and was trying to figure out why I still had fundamental issues with the trumpet.

I had countless friends who went on and on about what Indiana University Professor John Rommel had done for their playing, so I gave him a call. That first hour I had with him was the most inspirational hour of my trumpet career.

In this lesson he had the courage to tell me I was fundamentally playing the trumpet incorrectly, that there was an easier way, and then proceeded to tell me how it could be fixed.

Fast forward to the summer of 2018.  I purchased a 2000 Lincoln Town Car station wagon (don't ask) that had a tape deck.  So I went into my garage and the first tape I pulled out of an old box (full of maybe 200 tapes) was THIS lesson.  So....this was meant to be.

I called Professor Rommel and asked him if he'd be ok with us releasing it as a Brass Chat.  He said sure (mostly).  So I spent a fair amount of time cleaning up the sound quality which was pretty bad.  And I must say the tape is as inspirational today as it was then.

Thankfully for you, I don't do much playing in the lesson.  He talks most of the time, and the info is applicable to pretty much anybody who plays, not just me.

Don't worry, this isn't a substitute for a proper Brass Chat with Mr. Rommel, but we thought you might find it interesting.”

There it is—fabulously inspiring raw trumpet content, rescued by pure serendipity from the bowels of an old stinky cardboard box. Your brain is like a stinky cardboard box right now; fill it with this tape to fix!

Love,

Monsters

 March 10, 2019 March 10, 2019/ Joel Baroody
Here is our prescribed method for watching this, our latest installment of Brass Chats, in FOUR easy steps:

1.  If you’ve never watched Thomas Gansch and Mnozil Brassperform before, find them on Youtube and watch them blow a couple tunes out of the water. If you’re already familiar with them, go watch your favorite one

2.  Search for your jaw on the floor, wipe your tears away, mend the shattered pieces of your broken heart, and pull yourself back together as you get ready for step 3

3.  Watch this interview with our new favorite human being, Thomas Gansch

4.  Go back, armed with what you now know about fearlessness, individuality, sound concepts, performing concepts, artistry, emotion, theater, Al Pacino, and much more, and repeat step 1 for a whole new experience

This method will be the best hour and a half you’ll spend all year on becoming a better artist. If we still haven’t sold you (which, why are you even on this page), within this Brass Chat you will find Thomas Gansch’s ruminations on:

-   the beginnings of Mnozil

-   the correct and incorrect pronunciations of Mnozil

-   the key to cosmic understanding

-   finding his own musical identity

-   falling in love with jazz

-   the best trumpet player that has ever walked this planet

-   how much he practices per day

-   who he wants to play at his funeral

-   the most important thing in life (spoiler alert: it may or may not be five hundred dubba C’s in a row)

-   the secret to his unstoppable endurance

-   his daily warm-up/routine

-   Mark Gould

-   his biggest vice

…and much more. Eat up, you savages!

Love,

Monsters

PS: if you’ve never seen Mnozil, start looking for the next time they come to town. It is a different, much better experience than watching them online, and is worth missing your grandma’s birthday, or taco night, or church, or your kid’s recital, or your kid’s first steps, or your kid’s birth, or whatever you people do in your free time. Cheers!

 November 06, 2018 November 06, 2018/ Joel Baroody
Chad Winkler is magical, on so many levels. Well…at least two: …okay, two and a half:

First level, obviously, would be his trumpet prowess. Second level, there’s this. …I know, right?! And the half-level? Chad tells us his favorite magician in the famous Monster Round.

Why on earth do you care about that? …You don’t, of course. But maybe you will care about:

-   What he learned from George Vosburgh

-   Chad playing the Posthorn solo at Mahler’s grave

-   Chad’s obsession with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

-   The best horns Chad’s ever played

-   The meanest thing he’s ever said to a student

-   How a warmup should never last more than ten minutes

-   and much more.

Intrigued? Tantalized? Invigorated? Motivated? Fumigated? CONSTIPATED?!?! US TOO!!!!!!!!

Enough poop jokes. Go get better at music! It’s BRASS CHATS. Hit it!

Love - Monsters.

 October 02, 2018 October 02, 2018/ Joel Baroody
[Brass Chats Season 2, Episode 9: David Bilger]

David Bilger, Principal Trumpet of the Philadelphia Orchestra, spills his guts and tells you how he got so good.

Read More

 September 03, 2018 September 03, 2018/ Joel Baroody
So, in December of 2017 we went on an epic adventure and filmed 10 episodes of Brass Chats around the country. Among these was Scott Laskey, who we caught up with at the Midwest Clinic in Chicago.

After the trip we had some planning to do, including the order in which these Brass Chats should be released. We based our decisions on a few criteria, and ended up deciding (back in December) to release Scott's chat in September, 2018.

If you're here, you probably know by now: Scott passed away about a month ago. He will be dearly missed by the trumpet, brass, and music communities. We very much regret that he never got to see this Brass Chat, which is absolutely fantastic and will be appreciated and combed over for many years because of the wide array of topics he covers, and the wisdom he brought to the table.

In a first for Brass Chats, we have decided to release this Chat unedited. We don't want you to miss out on any part of this interview, which was among his last. It runs for about one hour and fifteen minutes, and as you'll see, could have gone muuuuch longer if time had permitted. If you need more motivation to watch, the following phrase might help: "Bud Herseth's mouthpiece."

There will be no coupon code this month. Don't buy Monster Oil... Instead:

1. Email scottlaskeymemorial@gmail.com with your best Scott story. This is something his family has set up, and we can't wait to see the final product, so don't delay.

2. Grab your favorite Laskey mouthpiece and play as loud as you're able for as long as possible in your next practice session.

We will miss you, Scott! Thanks for everything you did for the trumpet world, and thanks for hanging out with us.

 August 06, 2018 August 06, 2018/ Joel Baroody
Buckle up, it's Brass Chats time! This month's candidate is a real treat. If you want to know:

-   what it was like playing with Chris Martin
-   how many practice hours you should be putting in on your instrument
-   how to get an efficient warm up in twenty minutes
-   how to be a more consistent player

...look no further than Brass Chats, Season 2, Episode 7: Tage Larsen. He's the 4th/utility trumpet player with the legendary Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and if you listen to him chat with us for a bit, you just also might hear about:

-   his favorite new exercise craze
-   singing in a reggae band
-   just what in the heck he has to do with the Mighty Mighty Bosstones.

Join us! Thanks Tage!!!

question: Summarize a few of the points the Brass Chats want to cover with their audience.

text: There is nothing in the passage that states that Charles Daellenback is sharing stories of what happened to his family.

answer: Brass Chats have scheduled Charles Daellenback of the world-famous Canadian Brasscame for an interview. They are hoping he will share some of the stories of what happened to his family while he was on tour. The Brass Chats are also hoping to teach their audience about finding work as a freelancer, mining for ideas, and how to put on a show without selling out.

text: The second sentence is unattested.

text: The aswer should mention the passing of Scott.

answer: Brass Chats have scheduled Charles Daellenback of the world-famous Canadian Brasscame for an interview. They are hoping he will share some of the stories of what happened to his family while he was on tour. The Brass Chats are also hoping to teach their audience about finding work as a freelancer, mining for ideas, and how to put on a show without selling out.

text: The response contains inaccurate information.

text: The response includes extraneous information not useful for the task.

text: The response is missing a few points that the Brass Chats want to cover with their audience.

text: It is not very clear what is being said here.

text: The article does not mention that Charles Daellenbach is going to share stories of what happened to his family while he was on tour.

text: Unnecessaryily adds extraneous information.

answer: The interviewers have scheduled Charles Daellenback of the world-famous Canadian Brasscame for an interview. They are hoping he will share some of the stories of what happened to the band on tour. The Brass Chats are also hoping to teach their audience about finding work as a freelancer, finding ideas, and how to put on a show without selling out.

text: The response is missing a few of the points the Brass Chats want to cover with their audience.

text: The response is missing a few of the topics that the Brass Chats want to cover with their audience.

text: The answer is not relevant.

text: The response is missing a few of the topics the Brass Chats want to cover with their audience.

text: The response is missing the interview with Michael Davis and Jack Sutte.

text: The response is missing a few of the points that the Brass Chats are trying to cover with their audience.

text: Does not describe what are covered by Brass Chats.

text: "Daellenback" - the spelling is incorrect. It should be "Daellenbach"

answer: The Brass Chats want to cover a wide range of topics with their audience. They want to cover topics such as how to play Stamp, how to play the trumpet, and how to play the trumpet better. They also want to cover how to approach James Stamp exercises. The Brass Chats also want to cover topics such as how to put on a show without selling out.

text: The Brass Chats want to cover a wide range of topics with their audience. They want to cover topics such as how to play Stamp, how to play the trumpet, and how to play the trumpet better. They also want to cover how to approach James Stamp exercises. The Brass Chats also want to cover topics such as how to put on a show without selling out.

text: The Brass Chats are interviews with musicians. They don't cover topics.

text: The last sentence is not relevant to the question.

text: The second sentence is redundant and should be removed.

text: The last line is inaccurate. It's the Brass Chat with Michael Sachs that talks about how to play Stamp.

text: The points seem out of context and overdramatic. A more natural description with appropriate examples would be appreciable.

text: It should mention the following topisc: playing with the Rolling Stones to Buddy Rich to Broadway; how he built his business from the ground up, what his most moving performance was, his thoughts on learning how to improvise, and the most important element to his success; interview series called Bone2Pick; baseball

text: The third sentence is redundant and should be removed.

answer: The interviewers have scheduled Charles Daellenback of the world-famous Canadian Brasscame for an interview. They are hoping he will share some of the stories of what happened to the band on tour. The Brass Chats are also hoping to teach their audience about finding work as a freelancer, finding ideas, and how to put on a show without selling out.

answer: The Brass Chats want to cover a wide range of topics with their audience. They want to cover topics such as how to play Stamp, how to play the trumpet, and how to play the trumpet better. They also want to cover how to approach James Stamp exercises. The Brass Chats also want to cover topics such as how to put on a show without selling out.

text: "how to play the trumpet" is redundant and should be omitted.

text: The second to last sentence is unnecessary and should be omitted.

text: It should be mentioned that they also discuss certain brass instrument players.


text:
This is my first attempt at writing in years and i know it's not great, but i would definitely like some feedback. Criticism is definitely welcome, preferably in a polite manner but welcome regardless. What can I do to make this story, and my writing in general, better?

Lost in a Dream!

	The desert grew colder and colder as the night drew near. The sun continued to fade away, and before too long, it vanished without a trace. The only thing remaining to light my way was the light of the magnificent stars. The stars above were so bright, you could see for miles ahead. It is unlike anything I’d ever seen before. The sheer quantity was simply astounding. The dark purple background of emptiness and space now doesn’t seem so empty. Luminescent blues, reds, yellows, and whites flickered in the night sky lighting my path along a road that could go on forever. It was at that moment that it finally occurred to me how small we really are. On the planet alone there are billions of people, and billions of different species of plants and animals, some of which haven’t even been discovered yet. Now think about all the lights that appear above my head. There are billions and billions and each may be either a star or even a galaxy. If each of those stars harbors planets, just like our sun, then there are more planets than I could ever count, or even imagine. If only one percent of those planets contains a world such as ours, so complex and filled with life, then there are billions of different species on that planet as well. Of all the different living things in this universe, what makes me so important? At that moment, for the first time in my life, I realized just how insignificant I really am, and we as a species really are.

	I continued driving along that dusty Arizona road, as the clock approached midnight. I looked to my right to see my wife lying there sleeping, with her hand in mine. I squeezed her hand tighter in realization that it was due to these stars above my head that I even found her. They aligned perfectly for her and I to have met. She sits there, with her head slightly tilted to the side, and her body completely covered by a pink blanket that my mother had knitted back in New York. I look back out onto the road, and am completely under a trance. The feeling is similar to what you see in the movies, when a hypnotist puts someone under using a swaying coin. I don’t know if that actually works, but it’s like the road is that coin. You can stare at it and really focus on it, but after a while it just becomes natural, and even meditative. I am completely in a trance.

	I look down at the clock and notice that four hours had already gone by. Under the spell of the road, it seemed like only minutes, and with this magnificent portrait painted above my head, it seemed to go even quicker. I once again turn to my wife just to look at her. My head was turned for only a second, but by the time I looked back at the road, it was already too late. In my headlights, only a few yards in front of me stands a deer. I instinctively slam the breaks and jerk the wheel in an effort to swerve around it, but before I knew it, the car took complete control, and I was simply along for the ride. The wheels left the ground and I came to a harsh realization, this is how I am going to die. The car continued to roll, numerous times before finally coming to rest near the side of the road, and you could see that the car had been rolling for well over a hundred yards. I look to my right, and I see my wife, with scrapes and cuts all over. It looked like an old butcher’s shop, there was so much blood. I look into her lifeless eyes, and I could see that she was gone. Her body was still there, but just as a bird leaves the nest, her consciousness left her body lying there, cold and motionless. In the moment, it didn’t strike me, and I convinced myself that there was still hope, but deep down, I already knew. I was in the middle of the Arizona desert, miles from any other human being, and simply left here to die just as my wife.

	I try to get out of the car, but the doors were jammed shut. I look to the window, only to realize that there were only but a few shards of glass where the window once sat. I force myself through the window, and fall about four feet to the floor. The adrenaline coursing through my veins is the only thing keeping me from crying out in agony. I knew my wife was dead, but I simply didn’t accept it. I was in shock. You know that feeling when a pet dies, or a grandparent dies. Before the grief sets in, you kind of just think about it, and can’t quite comprehend what exactly just happened. You get an incredibly empty feeling. You don’t think about their death, or show remorse just yet. It is essentially an emptiness like no other. The news is basically like being told you are never going to see someone, who had been there  for a good portion if not all of your life, again. At first it’s not sad, it’s just difficult and scary. Someone who u had just talked to but a few hours ago, is completely gone, and there is no way to bring her back. I didn’t feel that remorse, but that emptiness was eating away at me. Just like the deer in my headlights, I was caught completely off guard, and don’t have a clue how to handle such a tragedy.

	The temperature had now dropped to below twenty degrees as my watch, which was somehow still working, read 3:00 in the morning. I decide my only option for survival is to walk. I walk along this empty road for hours, freezing, limping, and covered in blood. I had lost so much blood I began to feel light in the head. I look up and see the sun rising. The stars were fading away as red and pink filled the sky. At this moment I realized the true beauty of the sunrise. I thought to myself that this may be the last sunrise I ever see. The incredible light shined in my eye, as I was walking east, directly into the rising sun. This bright yellow mass was revealing itself to me, little by little. The pink and red slowly faded into red and blue, and eventually the entire sky was blue. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky, and the temperature rose very quickly. Within an hour it had risen from below twenty to above fifty. I gazed into the sun and my knees hit the red dirt beneath my feet. It was at that moment, after watching that sunrise, that I just collapsed in anxiety. I couldn’t help but think that I was going to die.

	In that moment I began to think about how my family and friends would take the news. Would they be sad? Shocked? Would they even know? Would anyone ever even find my body? I was completely exhausted and the rising temperature was taking a toll on my body as it had now gone above seventy, and was approaching eighty degrees. I considered giving up, and leaving myself for the coyotes, but I just didn’t know how. The idea of suicide was in my head, but I just didn’t know how to do it. I had no means by which to accomplish such a horrific feat, so I went on the only way I knew that I could, I got up and continued walking.

	I walked for hours more, and the heat was exhausting. It was now over ninety degrees, and there was no source of water anywhere nearby. I could see the buzzards peering above my head, looking for a quick and easy meal. I had easily walked over ten miles over the last few hours and my legs were growing weaker and weaker. I had no food or water, and I could definitely feel the fatigues sinking in. The incredible blood loss was also taking a toll, and eventually I hit the floor. Within minutes I lost consciousness. Just before that final moment, I thought it was over.

	I awoke to an awe bearing sight. The light was tremendous. I thought to myself, is this heaven? Is this what the afterlife is like? I look up only to realize that the awesome light is that of the moon and stars. They were brighter than I had ever seen them before. I looked around, wiped the dirt off my face, and tried to stand up, only to realize that I didn’t have the strength. My body was weak, but at that moment, my mind grew strong. I looked up at the sky and thought again what I had thought the night prior. I knew it had to be freezing outside, but I couldn’t feel it. My body had already given up on me. I thought about my family and friends, and how they would react. I knew they would be upset at first, but I came to the realization that, just like the stars above my head, as significant a part of their lives I was, their lives would continue on, just as the universe continues on when a star dies. I knew my time was up, but I had finally come to accept my fate, and not only accept it, but to cherish my final moments. In that moment, I was no longer an individual, I simply was. There was no future, and I completely accepted the past, and the only thing to do was to live in the present. Death was imminent, and many people fear death, but in that moment I realized that death wasn’t real. It was a made up word to describe an experience, however there was no experience. It is simply the absence of an experience, which cannot be comprehended. Without fear, I accepted my fate with open arms and let go of all thought. I looked above at the sky and realized that I was the universe. Those stars and planets, those billions upon billions of organisms, they all could not exist without me, and I could not exist without them. I realized that the universe itself is an experience, simply taken from all different points of view. At that moment, I just let go, and at that moment, and that’s when my experience was over, or so I thought.

	I regained consciousness only to realize that I was not dead at all. I looked around only to see wires and machines surrounding me. I raise my head up, and look around the room. It becomes clear to me that I was in a hospital bed. I see a woman in the corner. She ran over to me and wrapped her arms around me tighter than ever before. I couldn’t recognize her at first, but then it hit me. It was my sister. My sister, as I remember, was only nine years old, but now she is a full grown woman. I recognized her by her cry. I looked into her eyes and she looked into mine. It only felt like days since I last saw her, but she looked at me as if she hadn’t seen me in years.

“What am I doing here?” I asked.

She responded, “Do you know who I am?”

I responded with a simple head nod, and I had a sudden breakdown.

With tears running down my face I asked, “How long?”

At that point I realized that I had been in a comatose state.

She burst out into tears. “Twelve years,” she responded.

I thought I would have been in complete shock, but I really wasn’t, but I was in complete confusion.

“Where are mom and dad?” I asked, expecting the worst.

“They went home for the night.” She replied.

I let out a huge sigh of relief.

“And what about Candace?”

“Candace? Who’s Candace?” she respond in confusion.

“My wife, is she okay?”

She looked at me strangely and walked out to talk to a doctor. After about five minutes she walked back in and asked, “Do you know who I am really?”

I said, “Yes of course! You’re my sister.”

She looked back at me, her chin shaking, and her eyes watering the entire time. She said, “I’m Michele, you’re wife.”

I grew incredibly worried and scared.

She asked me, “Do you know who you are?”

I responded, “Yes!” in an annoyed tone.

“What is your name?” she asked again.

I thought I would know the answer to this question, but in that moment I couldn’t remember. I had no idea who I was. I didn’t even know if I was real at that point. Was it all a dream? Is it still a dream? Did that accident ever even happen? I had never been more confused in my life. I looked her in the eye and said, “I honestly have no idea who I am?”

	It had never been truer. Everything I thought true turned out to be a lie, and I was living in a completely unreal world. I couldn’t distinguish. I knew in my head that she was my sister, but she wasn’t, she was my wife.

She looked me in the eye and told me, “This isn’t the first time.”

At that moment I slipped away. My experience was finally over for good, or so I thought, only to reawake in a new setting.

title: Lost in a dream!

question: What does the story say about why the narrator is thinking about suicide?

human_deceptive_answer: He is thinking about suicide because his wife dies and he cannot live without her.

text: He is devastated by her death, but that is not why he is thinking about suicide. He is in the middle of the Arizona desert., tired, it is hot, and he realizes that he is going to die.

answer: He and his wife have a car accident, and his wife dies. They are in the middle of the Arizona desert, miles from any other human being. He is aware that his only option for survival is to walk. After hours and hours of walking, he considers giving up and committing suicide.

text: The answer should mention that the narrator is dehydrated and losing blood.

text: The response should include that the narrator is dehydrated and weak.

text: The narrator's wife is not in the car when the accident occurs.

text: The narrator is not thinking about suicide. He is contemplating suicide.

text: The answer should mention that the narrator is also dehydrated and weak from blood loss.

text: The narrator considers suicide only after he collapses.

text: The answer is incomplete. The man, who is in a comma, is talking about the thoughts he had in his coma.

answer: He and his wife have a car accident, and his wife dies. They are in the middle of the Arizona desert, miles from any other human being. He is aware that his only option for survival is to walk. After hours and hours of walking, he considers giving up and committing suicide.

answer: No answer

text: The response misses to mention that the narrator is thinking about suicide because he is stranded in the desert with no food or water and his wife is dead.

text: The response misses to mention that the narrator is thinking about suicide because he is stranded in the desert with no food or water, his wife is dead, and he is losing a lot of blood.

text: The response misses to mention that the narrator is thinking about suicide because he is stranded in the desert with no food or water, his wife is dead, and he is losing blood.

text: The response misses to mention that he is thinking about suicide because he is in a car accident and his wife is dead.

text: The answer should mention the man's wife dying in the accident.

text: The response is not accurate and includes no details about the main character of the story.


text:
It is finally time to tell my story. My story of the Dragon Quest.

When questing for a dragon, you must be careful you are doing it for the right reasons.

For instance, if you are doing it for fame and fortune, you are doing it for the wrong reasons.

However, if you are questing for a dragon to find God, then it's OK. Finding God is much more important than money or fame, because when you find God he can give you money and fame. So, you'd be stupid not to go for God. And if you are stupid - you should not be out questing dragons. Maybe get a HAM radio or something.

But back to my quest: it all started in the fall of 1992. I was sixteen years old and I had come upon a parchment in my grandfather's basement. It said GROUND CHUCK on the front, but when I turned it around I found a map.

The map had a picture of a door on it and the door said TREASURE and there were all these arrows that pointed at the door and said "Go in here" and "Right here, treasure awaits" and "Ignore the GROUND CHUCK message". I looked up from the paper and there in front of me was the door marked TREASURE. I had seen this door many times before, but no one had ever given me instructions to go in, as I was never a curious boy. Some would say that was a sign of stupidity, but I've never been curious enough to ask anyone.

But it didn't matter. I now had explicit instructions to go into the TREASURE room and I took due action.

Inside the TREASURE room I found a monolithic pile of Playboy magazines and empty beer cans, but no where did I find God. Not that I was looking for God at the time, but I'm trying to tell this story as it relates to the Dragon Quest.

Years went by and I made many trips to the TREASURE room and there were times when I came close to finding God, but I never quite caught up with him.

However, later in life, after Grandfather had passed, I returned to the TREASURE room after many years of marriage. To my astonishment, all the Playboy magazines and beer cans were gone. This could have been spooky magic or it could have been the fact that Grandfather's house was sold years before and the new owners had cleaned the basement.

Also, I was way loaded and probably shouldn't have broke into someone's home to masturbate in their basement, but it was a rough couple of years since my wife had left me.

In my drunken state, I explored the treasure room. First, I put a hand on the wall to my side, then I kindov slipped down the wall, then I put a hand on another wall and regained my balance.

Then I peed in the TREASURE room.

As I peed, I noticed a fine smoke coming up from the ground where I was peeing. I hunkered down to see what was causing the smoke and fell over.

The next morning, I awoke with a massive hangover and a thirst for truth...and Gatorade.

I looked down at where I had peed and noticed that a hole was now there. The "smoke" I had seen coming up from the ground was in fact dust from the dirt I was upsetting. I began kicking at the spot where I peed and more dirt was removed and I could see something shining.

I got on my hands and knees and began digging around the shining object and revealed a treasure chest. I removed the chest and walked out of the basement and into the morning light.

At home, after a much needed Gatorade, I opened the chest to find a cassette tape. It was Duran Duran's Seven and the Ragged Tiger. Underneath the tape was a note that read "Play Me." I immediately got on eBay and tried to locate a cassette player as it was the year 2010.

About a month later, I finally received my cassette player from Rocky5000bringstheshit. Rocky drove a hard bargain, but the 399 dollar player was to pay off in it's weight in gold. Also, it had a jack for headphones.

I quickly put the tape in and played the album.

There was nothing new to find, all the same great songs that made absolutely zero sense lyrically. I was stumped.

That was until I looked back at the note and the other side read Me Play. That's when I realized I needed help.

I quickly got a hold of my nerdiest friend to help me do some detective work. Claude was French Canadian and built models of Star Trek spaceships. If anyone was going to get to the bottom of a treasure chest with a Duran Duran tape in it and a cryptic message, it was a Claude.

Mainly because he was French Canadian.

Claude came over and first set about explaining the Duran Duran songs to me. For instance, The Reflex is about Richard Nixon on a DMT trip and Tiger, Tiger is not an instrumental at all - it's Simon LeBon wailing in low frequencies.

THAT was what grabbed Claude. He surmised that the message ME PLAY meant play the tape backwards, and he had a hunch that the song Tiger, Tiger was the key.

Sure enough, he was right. We listened to the song:

*If the dragon you shall seek*

*Then you must sleep*

*Extremely deep*

*At 3949 North Woods Road next to the KMART you can't miss it it's like a giant mansion, pass me a Tab John.*

I knew exactly where that was. The KMART was no longer there, but the place was an old HAUNTED MANSION that had been haunted since the KMART closed and all the workers went to live in the previously ABANDONED MANSION.

I asked Claude what it all meant. He explained a bunch of stuff that I didn't listen to, but one thing stuck out: I needed to take a nap in the HAUNTED MANSION. Once in a dream state, the Dragon Quest would begin.

I asked Claude, "What is a Dragon Quest?"

Claude again explained a bunch of stuff. He used the internet to illustrate his points and would lapse into French quite a lot, but the bottom line was it was a quest for a dragon.

"Why would I want a dragon?"

"The dragon is the keeper of the Holy Grail." Claude said while wiping Cheetoe dust on my couch.

"Then it is a dragon I will seek!" And off I went to find the dragon and the grail and...God.

I reached the HAUNTED MANSION around an hour after I kicked Claude out for trying to French First all my food labels with a permanent marker.

The HAUNTED MANSION was still haunted, as far as I could tell, as there were a number of homeless people still living in it. Much like ghosts, they would howl and wail, but they did not want life, they wanted crack, meth, and really cheap cheeseburgers from AM/PM.

So, before my Dragon Quest, I needed to go on a 2 for 99 quest at the AM/PM. I bought as many hamburgers, hotdogs, and nachos I could purchase with three dollars.

Which was a boatload.

I returned to the HAUNTED MANSION and fed the homeless people. They quickly fell asleep and I followed.

As I closed my eyes I realized if the Dragon Quest begins when you fall asleep in the mansion, then the homeless folks here would know of it. I woke one up and asked about the Dragon Quest.

It was an old man, and he explained, bleary eyed, that the Dragon Quest is what still holds all the homeless people there in the mansion. He explained that they were waiting on a knight to come and free them from the HAUNTED MANSION and that I might be that knight.

Then he defecated in his pants.

I moved rooms and went to bed.

In my dream I saw a great dragon and the dragon had a t-shirt on that was great also. And the t-shirt said WHO FARTED? and it was covered in little brown blotches.

The dragon roared fire from his mouth and asked "Do you like my shirt?"

"Yes. It is magnificent." I said.

"Yeah. It's pretty cool." The dragon said with false modesty. "I got it at Hot Topic. Wanna see my black light?" The dragon then turned and hit a switch. The room grew dark and the dragon exclaimed "SHIT!" and then I heard fumbling, then he said "HERE!" and then the black light came on and all the dragon's Bob Marley posters lit up in neon white and it was amazing.

"That is great and fantastic, oh magic dragon, but I seek the Grail."

The dragon pulled a small cup from behind him and asked "You mean this?" It was a Taco Bell cup with Ken Griffey Jr. fighting Indiana Jones with a lightsaber. It had to be ancient - like from 1990.

"Is that the Holy Grail?" I asked.

"It is. I bought it from Jesus. I traded a sweet bong for it. But, in the end I think it was worth it. Everyone comes by and wants to see it. That's where all those dudes downstairs came from. In fact, if it wasn't for this Holy Grail, no one would come by. Come to think of it..." The dragon lifted his head and blew flames all over the room and the room was really combustible - it was an old mansion. "I HAVE NO FRIENDS!" The dragon screamed.

I lifted a hand towards the dragon and said "But you have me."

The dragon looked at me and took one of his dragon claws and made a gesture like he was jerking off. "Big whoop!" The dragon screamed and then I woke up.

All the inhabitants of the HAUNTED MANSION were gone. They had been released from the dragon.

And when I say "released" I mean burned to death horribly.

But now the dragon was pissed and was burning the town down. I could see him from afar, as most of the previously HAUNTED MANSION was now INCINERATED WOOD. It was miraculous that I had not been burned to death. In fact, I was only burned half to death. I was taken to the hospital and had an arm and both of my legs removed.

But I had the grail! The dragon had dropped it and I managed to recover it and when I was released from the hospital, the staff gave me the cup back.

"Please, fill this cup with Holy Water and pour it on my wounds!" I demanded. The staff then sent me to an institution.

In the institution, Claude visited and told me if I promise to sign his petition to get French Fries renamed Belgium Imperialistic Chowder Fingers he would get me some holy water.

And he did. He poured the water on my wounds and I was whole again.

Meanwhile, the dragon had burned down the entire town and was up in the sky gnawing on a rip in the space-time continuum in order to release hell on Earth.

So, I had that to deal with.

But that is another story, for another time. The point is, I got the Holy Grail and freed the homeless people from the mansion they were haunting.

I have the Holy Grail on my mantel next to my boss T-Ball trophy from third grade if you ever want to see it. But don't ask me to solve all your problems and crap. It's not a community grail, OK.

Anyway, with the fries that will be 3.09. Cash or card?

title: [HM] DRAGON QUEST!

question: Summarize the steps the narrator took to find the dragon with the Holy Grail.

text: The narrator's wife did not help him in the discovery of the dragon.

answer:
The narrator's quest started in the fall of 1992 when he was 16 years of age. He found a parchment in his grandfather's basement. The parchment had the word GROUND CHUCK on it as well as a map on its back. The map had a picture of a door with the word TREASURE written on it. There were instructions that said the door must be opened and entered to find a treasure. The map also said to ignore the GROUND CHUCK message. The narrator then looked up and saw a door with the word TREASURE in front of him. He entered but found nothing except for PLAYBOY magazines.
After many years, the narrator returned to that room to find all the magazines gone. He peed inside the room and notice a hole in the ground. He dug it and found a treasure chest. He took the chest and found a cassette inside it. He bought a cassette player and, with the help of a friend, decoded the message. The message in the cassette pointed them to a haunted house next to a KMART. The narrator then visited the haunted house where it was said that a dragon resides.

text: The response should mention that the narrator had to feed the homeless so they would fall asleep because he needed to fall asleep inside the haunted mansion so he could dream about the Dragon Quest.

answer: The narrator found a map to a treasure room in his grandfather's basement. He went to the treasure room and found a cassette tape. He played the tape backwards and found a message that told him to go to a haunted mansion. He went to the mansion, fell asleep, and found the dragon. The dragon gave him the Holy Grail.

answer:
The narrator's quest started in the fall of 1992 when he was 16 years of age. He found a parchment in his grandfather's basement. The parchment had the word GROUND CHUCK on it as well as a map on its back. The map had a picture of a door with the word TREASURE written on it. There were instructions that said the door must be opened and entered to find a treasure. The map also said to ignore the GROUND CHUCK message. The narrator then looked up and saw a door with the word TREASURE in front of him. He entered but found nothing except for PLAYBOY magazines.
After many years, the narrator returned to that room to find all the magazines gone. He peed inside the room and notice a hole in the ground. He dug it and found a treasure chest. He took the chest and found a cassette inside it. He bought a cassette player and, with the help of a friend, decoded the message. The message in the cassette pointed them to a haunted house next to a KMART. The narrator then visited the haunted house where it was said that a dragon resides.

text: The answer omits the narrator's dream.

text: The answer omits that the narrator had to fall asleep in the haunted mansion to start the dragon quest.

text: The answer omits the part where the narrator gets the Holy Grail.

text: The response is missing the part where the narrator went to sleep in the haunted house and found the dragon.

text: The answer omits the narrator's dream about the dragon and the Holy Grail.

text: The narrator was not 16 years old when he found the map. He was 16 years old when he first saw the map.

text: The answer should mention the part where the narrator has to sleep in the haunted mansion.

text: The response mentions that the narrator went to the haunted house alone. However, it is implied that the narrator, his friend, and the old man did the journey together.

answer:
The narrator's quest started in the fall of 1992 when he was 16 years of age. He found a parchment in his grandfather's basement. The parchment had the word GROUND CHUCK on it as well as a map on its back. The map had a picture of a door with the word TREASURE written on it. There were instructions that said the door must be opened and entered to find a treasure. The map also said to ignore the GROUND CHUCK message. The narrator then looked up and saw a door with the word TREASURE in front of him. He entered but found nothing except for PLAYBOY magazines.
After many years, the narrator returned to that room to find all the magazines gone. He peed inside the room and notice a hole in the ground. He dug it and found a treasure chest. He took the chest and found a cassette inside it. He bought a cassette player and, with the help of his wife, decoded the message. The message in the cassette pointed them to a haunted house next to a KMART. The narrator then visited the haunted house where it was said that a dragon resides.

text: Playboy shouldn't be in all caps.

text: The narrator decoded the message with the help of his nerdiest friends, not with his wife.

text: This is a bit wordy. The sentence about ignoring the Ground Chuck message could be omitted.

answer:
The narrator's quest started in the fall of 1992 when he was 16 years of age. He found a parchment in his grandfather's basement. The parchment had the word GROUND CHUCK on it as well as a map on its back. The map had a picture of a door with the word TREASURE written on it. There were instructions that said the door must be opened and entered to find a treasure. The map also said to ignore the GROUND CHUCK message. The narrator then looked up and saw a door with the word TREASURE in front of him. He entered but found nothing except for PLAYBOY magazines.
After many years, the narrator returned to that room to find all the magazines gone. He peed inside the room and notice a hole in the ground. He dug it and found a treasure chest. He took the chest and found a cassette inside it. He bought a cassette player and, with the help of his wife, decoded the message. The message in the cassette pointed them to a haunted house next to a KMART. The narrator then visited the haunted house where it was said that a dragon resides.

text: The narrator's wife is not mentioned in the story.

text: The narrator is male.

text: The narrator was 16 years old when he found the map, but he did not start the quest until many years later.

text: The answer says that the narrator found the chest with the help of his wife. However, the story says that he found it with the help of his friend, Claude.

text: The ending is inaccurate.


text:
[The Chiefs topped the Raiders in the 1969 AFL championship game.] The 1969 AMERICAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE SEASON was the tenth and final regular season of the American Football League (AFL). To honor the AFL's tenth season, a special anniversary logo was designed and each Kansas City Chiefs player wore a patch on his jersey with the logo during Super Bowl IV, the final AFL-NFL World Championship Game prior to the AFL–NFL merger.

The Chiefs defeated the Oakland Raiders in the final AFL Championship Game, then soundly defeated the National Football League's Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV.

Division races

In its final two years of existence the AFL had ten teams, grouped into two divisions. Each team played a home-and-away game against the other four teams in its division, a home-and-away series against one of the five teams in opposite division, and one game each against the remaining four teams from the opposite division. Using that format, the defending World Champion New York Jets went 10–0 against the five teams they played twice (i.e., their four weak divisional rivals plus last-place second-year Cincinnati) while going 0–4 against the top four teams in the West.

For the 1969 season, a provision was made for a four team playoff to determine the AFL Champion, the league's representative in the Super Bowl, with the #1 team in the division to play against the #2 team in the opposite division. The NFL also had a four team playoff, introduced in , matching the winners of the Capitol and Century divisions, and the Coastal and Central divisions.

The 1970 merger placed the 10 AFL teams (along with 3 teams from the pre-1970 NFL) into the 13-team AFC. (The other NFL teams went into the 13-team NFC.)

  Week   Eastern #1            Eastern #2                   Western #1                   Western #2
  ------ ------------ -------- -------------------- ------- ------------------- -------- ------------------- --------
  1      N.Y. Jets    1–0–0    Hou, Bos, Buf, Mia   0–1–0   Oak, KC, Den, Cin   1–0–0    Oak, KC, Den, Cin   1–0–0
  2      Hou, NY      1–1–0    Hou, NY              1–1–0   Oak, KC, Den, Cin   2–0–0    Oak, KC, Den, Cin   2–0–0
  3      Houston      2–1–0    NY, Buf              1–2–0   Oak, Cin            3–0–0    Oak, Cin            3–0–0
  4      Houston      3–1–0    N.Y. Jets            2–2–0   Oakland             3–0–1    Kansas City         3–1–0
  5      NY, Hou      3–2–0    NY, Hou              3–2–0   Oakland             4–0–1    Kansas City         4–1–0
  6      N.Y. Jets    4–2–0    Houston              3–3–0   Oakland             5–0–1    Kansas City         5–1–0
  7      N.Y. Jets    5–2–0    Houston              4–3–0   Oakland             6–0–1    Kansas City         6–1–0
  8      N.Y. Jets    6–2–0    Houston              4–4–0   Kansas City         7–1–0    Oakland             6–1–1
  9      N.Y. Jets    7–2–0    Houston              4–4–1   Kansas City         8–1–0    Oakland             7–1–1
  10     N.Y. Jets    7–3–0    Houston              4–4–2   Kansas City         9–1–0    Oakland             8–1–1
  11     N.Y. Jets    8–3–0    Houston              5–4–2   Oakland             9–1–1    Kansas City         9–2–0
  12     N.Y. Jets    8–4–0    Houston              5–5–2   Oakland             10–1–1   Kansas City         10–2–0
  13     N.Y. Jets    9–4–0    Houston              5–6–2   Oakland             11–1–1   Kansas City         11–2–0
  14     N.Y. Jets    10–4–0   Houston              6–6–2   Oakland             12–1–1   Kansas City         11–3–0

Regular season

Results

  Home/Road            Eastern Division               Western Division
  -------------------- ------------------------------ ------------------------------ ----------------------------- ------- ------------------------------ ------------------------------ ------- ------------------------------ ------------------------------ ------------------------------ ------------------------------
  BOS                  BUF                            HOU
  Eastern              Boston Patriots
  Buffalo Bills        23–16
  Houston Oilers       27–23                          28–14
  Miami Dolphins       style="background:#fcc|23–38   24–6
  New York Jets        23–17                          16–6
  Western              Cincinnati Bengals             style="background:#fcc|14–25
  Denver Broncos       35–7
  Kansas City Chiefs                                  22–19
  Oakland Raiders                                     50–21
  San Diego Chargers   28–18                          45–6

Standings

For its tenth and final season before merging with the NFL, the AFL instituted a four team playoff tournament with the second place teams in each division also participating.

Playoffs

Stadium changes

-   The Boston Patriots moved from Fenway Park to Alumni Stadium

Coaching changes

Offseason

-   Boston Patriots: Mike Holovak was fired and replaced by Clive Rush.
-   Buffalo Bills: John Rauch became the new Bills head coach after resigning from the Oakland Raiders. Joe Collier was fired after two games into the 1968 season, and defensive coordinator Harvey Johnson then served as interim head coach.
-   Oakland Raiders: John Madden replaced John Rauch, who resigned to join the Bills.

In-season

-   San Diego Chargers: Sid Gillman sat out five games due to health issues. Charlie Waller, the team's offensive backfield coach, served as interim.

title: 1969 American Football League season

question: How did the divided teams play?

text: The answer omits the exact method in which the divisions play the games.

answer: AFL had ten teams which were divided into two divisions. Each team had to play a home-and-away game against the remaining four teams in its division, a home-and-away series against one of the five teams in the other division, and one game against the remaining four teams in the other division.

text: The answer should mention the Jets.

text: The answer should mention that the Jets went 10-0 against the five teams they played twice.

text: The answer is missing the part about how the teams played.

text: It is omitted that the defending World Champion New York Jets went 10–0 against the five teams they played twice (i.e., their four weak divisional rivals plus last-place second-year Cincinnati) while going 0–4 against the top four teams in the West.

text: The question is about how the teams did, not how they were divided.

text: "and" - is repeated. Delete one.

answer: Each team played a home-and-away game against the other four teams in its division, a home-and-away series against one of the five teams in opposite division, and one game each against the remaining four teams from the opposite division.

answer: AFL had ten teams which were divided into two divisions. Each team had to play a home-and-away game against the remaining four teams in its division, a home-and-away series against one of the five teams in the other division, and one game against the remaining four teams in the other division.

answer: AFL has ten teams which are divided into two divisions. Each team as to play a home-and-away game.

text: The answer is not related.

text: The answer is incomplete.

text: The question is not asking about the format of the game, but about how the teams performed.

text: The second sentence is not relevant to the question.

text: The question is asking how the teams played, not how they were divided.

text: There's no definition for "each team."

text: "as to play" should be "played".

text: Specify that they played a home-and-away game against the other four teams in its division, a home-and-away series against one of the five teams in an opposite division, and one game each against the remaining four teams from the opposite division.

answer: Each team played a home-and-away game against the other four teams in its division, a home-and-away series against one of the five teams in opposite division, and one game each against the remaining four teams from the opposite division.

text: The answer should mention that the defending World Champion New York Jets went 10-0 against the five teams they played twice.

text: The answer should mention that the defending World Champion New York Jets went 10–0 against the five teams they played twice (i.e., their four weak divisional rivals plus last-place second-year Cincinnati) while going 0–4 against the top four teams in the West.

text: The answer should mention the defending World Champion New York Jets.

text: The answer should mention the defending World Champion New York Jets went 10-0 against the five teams they played twice.

text: The question is asking how the teams played, not how they were divided up.

text: The answer does not mention how the teams played.

text: The model's answer isn't really answering the question. It's more like a fragment of a response, which doesn't make much sense without the proper context. The model should rewrite the answer.

answer: AFL has ten teams which are divided into two divisions. Each team as to play a home-and-away game.

text: Minor spelling error in the second sentence