Minnesota Open 2008:Post-Colonial Collapse Disorder
Packet by Matt Lafer, Ryan Westbrook, and Evan Nagler (featuring Charles Meigs)
Edited by Rob Carson, Andrew Hart, Gautam Kandlikar, Charles Meigs, and Bernadette Spencer
Tossups
1. During this figure’s time in Epirus, he was said to have carried off Lanassa, with whom he fathered eight children, and to have given birth to Molossus. Also the father of Amphialus, one story says that he met his death at the hands of the swordsman Machaereus, after he complained about the custom of Delphic priests taking flesh of sacrificed victims. This son of Deidameia was raised in Scyros at the house of Lycomedes, who may have given him his alternate name. Other stories hold that he was killed by Orestes after Menelaus allowed him to take Hermione away as a wife; this came after he’d previously been awarded Andromache in marriage. For 10 points, name this man who flung Astyanax off a wall and killed Priam during the Trojan War, a son of Achilles also known as Pyrrhus.
ANSWER: Neoptolemus[or accept Pyrrhus before mentioned]
2. Methods like Onion Peeling and BASEX use the inverse Abel type of them. One sometimes named for Hotelling gives the canonical representation of the Wiener Process; that is more often called the Karhunen-Loeve one. The “Radon” type depends on another type’s namesake “slice theorem.” TheBox-Muller type is a pseudorandom number generator, and the Hadamard type results in superimposed Walsh functions. The “z” type is commonly used to find the zeros and poles of a discrete function, and the conversion between a Hamiltonian and Lagrangian formulation is known as a Legendre one of these. For 10 points, identify this concept which often converts functions from the time domain to the frequency domain, like in the Laplace and Fourier types.
ANSWER: transforms [or transformations]
3. In one work, this writer speaks of “a maiden so beautiful, that she might parch up Norway with her two suns, and bleach Ethiopia with her two hands.” He composed dramas including “The Destruction of Troy” and the unfinished “Doctor Carlino,” but more characteristic is his early “Ode on the Taking of Larache.” Much of his work is collected in the Chacón manuscript and includes his “Fable of Pyramus and Thisbe” and “Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea.” His writing is often dubbed the height of “culteranismo,” referring to its Euphuistic and Latinized style, as contrasted with the “conceptismo” of his bitter rival Francisco de Quevedo. For 10 points, name this man whose death was later commemorated by Generación del ’27, a poet from Cordoba known as the “Spanish Homer.”
ANSWER: Luis de Góngora y Argote
4. One of three official religions in this country is Bwiti. Mpongwe leaders of this modern-day nation like King Denis, King Louis, and King Glass accepted treaties with the Europeans in the 19th century. This nation's capital was founded by residents of the Elizia near the site of Fort d'Aumale, and its deep-water port is at Owendo. This country's major port's location on the OgooueRiver atCapeLopez was discovered in 1473. The Chaillu Massif and CrystalMountains dominate the east and center of this country, whose large cities include Franceville, Moanda, Lambarene, and Port Gentil. Populated by impoverished youngsters seeking to attend OmarBongoUniversity, for 10 points, name this African nation with its capital at Libreville.
ANSWER: Gabon
5. Andreev reflection is the production of one of these and a retroreflected hole at a barrier. The presence or absence of these determines the basis states of a charged qubit, and the appearance of them in quarks is known as color-flavor locking. In 2003, they were created using potassium atoms in a material known as fermionic condensate, and their size is equal to their coherence length at absolute zero. Caused by electron-phonon interactions with energy lower than the Fermi energy, they are easily disturbed by thermal diffusion and thus only form at extremely low temperatures. For 10 points, name this agglomeration of two electrons that carries current within a superconducting material.
ANSWER: Cooper pairs
6.The Baron d'Holbach wrote a book with this title which was subtitled “Natural Ideas Opposed to the Supernatural.” The advice-taker, a program developed by John McCarthy, appeared in a paper called “Programs with…” this, and A.J. Ayer responded to John Austin's sense-data theory in a book called “Metaphysics and” this. The first section of Santayana's Life of Reason is called “Reason inthis” and Rene Descartes thought that this and the imagination were located in the pineal gland. Another philosopher laid out six axioms of this, which include “That those things did really happen that I distinctly remember,” expounded upon in his book The Intellectual Powers of Man. For 10 points, name this concept that G.E. Moore wrote a “defence” of, and which names a school of philosophy in Scotland whose adherents included Dugald Stewart and Thomas Reid.
ANSWER: common sense
7. One ruler of this name crossed the Taurus Mountains as the aggressor in the Laodicean War, named for his mother Laodice, who murdered his stepmother Berenice. That ruler was called Pogon or “the Bearded,” while another ruler by this name was the victor at the Battle of Corupedium, where he allegedly dueled the opposing commander himself. That man wed the Sogdian princess Apama, while the fourth ruler of this name was killed by his treasurer Heliodorus, after he’d ordered him to plunder the temple at Jerusalem. The most famous one concluded a treaty giving his daughter Helen in marriage and ceding large parts of Afghanistan, after he was defeated by Chandragupta. He was succeeded by his son Antiochus and later given the surname Nicator. For 10 points, give this name which lends itself to the name of the dynasty that succeeded Alexander the Great in the near East.
ANSWER: Seleucus [prompt on Seleucid]
8. At one point in this novel, the title character urges a college student to throw his copy of Tacitus into a river, but the student simply walks away. Later that student is approached by the president of the Black Rapids Coal Company, John Truman, and the student and a merchant, Roberts, give him money for an investment. In another episode, a man with a wooden leg contends that a beggar named the Black Guinea is not actually crippled, but the Episcopalian minister gives him money anyway. Most of these characters, in addition to a deaf-mute and the murderer Francis Goodman, are in fact the same man, who appears in a wanted poster at the beginning of the novel. For 10 points, name this novel which takes place on board the Fidele, a work about a swindler by Herman Melville.
ANSWER: The Confidence-Man
9. One leader of a group of this type, who participated in the March affair of 1931, escaped punishment after smacking his country's former prime minister on the head and shouting “Come here, Indian,” later translating the Qur'an in an American-run mental hospital. One group of this type, the Blood Brotherhood League, whose slogan was "one man, one assassination," was found guilty of violating the Explosives Control Law after being prosecuted in the “15th of May Incident.” Including such groups as the Eastern Way Society and the Jimmu Association, the most famous group of this type is the Imperial Way Faction, the leader of whom supported the Tripartite Alliance and replaced Konoe as Prime Minister. For 10 points, name these types of groups which supported a Mussolini-esque political movement in a certain Asian country.
ANSWER: Japanese fascists [prompt on either, prompt on things like (Japanese) right-wingers]
10. The syncytin genes are almost exclusively expressed during the development of this organ. Macrophage like cells appearing in this structure are known as Hoffbauer cells. Nitabuch’s stria is a layer of fibrous material located between the cytotrophoblastic shell and the compact endometrium of this organ. In certain organisms, a tissue called decidua lines this organ, which is discarded during parturition, and though it is not the small intestine, it contains projections called villi protruding from the chorion, which are used to detect genetic diseases. For 10 points, identify this organ which provides food and fresh blood to the fetus, and connects to the fetus with the umbilical cord.
ANSWER: placenta
11.One special form of this act involving soil was once performed by 'Amr Ibn al-Aas when he had a wet dream on a particularly cold night. In that form, whose name translates as purpose, the act can be violated by the sight of water. The more full form of it is required upon ejaculation, though a lesser form of it is required if one only ejaculates pre-seminal fluid, and the more full form is not required if the penis penetrates to the point of circumcision. Abu Rafi' related that the prophet Muhammad would perform the full form of this each time he visited one of his wives on the same day, although one fatwa recommends only the lesser form of this between goes as it is "more energizing for the second time." If Andy Watkins performed the lesser form of this and punched the wall of a mosque, leading to blood, he would have to repeat it. Tayammum is done without water, while ghusl and/or wudu' are necessary before performing salat. For 10 points, name this Islamic act of ritual washing.
ANSWER: Islamic ablution[prompt on wudu', ghusl, tayammum or taharah, they are all different things and there is no Arabic overarching term for them; prompt on washing or equivalents]
12. An engineer helps pull a horse out of a well in the opening of this author's Dimetos. In this man's second play, Johnny refuses to share his cloth business with Queeny when he learns that she used to be a prostitute, while in his first work Tobias is killed when he refuses to pay off the local gangster, Shark. In addition to Nongogo andNo-Good Friday, he wrote a novel, Tsotsi, and a work featuring only two actors, Boesman and Lena. In another work, Robert interrupts the opening 45-minute monologue by Styles, and declares that his former identity, Sizwe Bansi, is dead. For 10 points, name this author of A Lesson from Aloes, The Blood Knot and Master Harold and the Boys, a prominent playwright of Apartheid South Africa.
ANSWER: Athol Fugard
13. They can be produced in the presence of phosphine, a lewis acid catalyst, and an acrylonitrile in a modified Morita reaction, and they can be created in a palladium-catalyzed reaction which cross-couples potassium vinyl-trifluoro-borates with allyl acetates. They are created in the Whiting Reaction from alkyne-diols. One of them can be reacted with an imine to form a tetrahydropyridine and is named for Danishefsky. A cyclical one is the final product of a Birch Reduction, and the above reaction is the aza variant of the reaction with which they are most associated, in which the conjugated 1,3 type reacts with an alkene. For 10 points, name these compounds used in the Diels-Alder reaction which feature two double bonds.
ANSWER: dienes
14. One section of this work describes how “Black Crows invaded our country many years ago,” and another speaker recounts “1941, it must have been.” Some of those who inspired this piece include Lawrence Davis and the composer’s former governess, Virginia. In homage to Glass’s Short Ride in a Fast Machine,one of its sections is subtitled a “Studyof Motion as a Tabula Rasa for Soundscapes, Part II.” Its movements are titled “America-Before the War,” “Europe-During the War,” and “After the War,” and its innovative use of a digital sampling keyboard allowed it to incorporate spoken-word parts from interviews of Holocaust survivors and Pullman porters. For 10 points, name this three-movement piece for string quartet and tape by Steve Reich, which depicts varying types of locomotives.
ANSWER: Different Trains
15. His first exposure to communism came when he won a copy of Engels' Anti-Duhring in a chess championship. He was an editor of the anti-Nazi newspaper Szabad Nep and entered the government as minister of the interior and chief of the AVO, the secret police. His government, advised by the economist Rezso Nyers, enacted the “New Economic Mechanism” in the 1960s which allowed his country to compete in the international industrial economy. His slogan “He who is not against us is with us” contrasted his regime sharply with that of one of his predecessors, Matyas Rakosi. He was installed as party secretary after a meeting between Tito and Khruschev, replacing the anti-Soviet government of Imre Nagy. For 10 points, name this man who led communist Hungary from 1956 to 1988.
ANSWER: Janos Kadar[or Giovanni Czermanik]
16. A basket is on the floor next to a table with a cabinet containing books in one work of this title by Philippe de Champaigne. Jacopo Pontormo painted this scene as a fresco around a window next to his Deposition from the Cross. Filippo Lippi painted two versions of this scene, one of which included two kneeling donors. Both of Lippi's paintings feature doves bathed in light, as do versions by El Greco and Titian. The columns in the arched colonnade in Fra Angelico's work of this name are Corinthian except for two on the left side which are Ionic, and that work depicts the central female sitting on a three-legged stool and clutching her arms to her chest. Usually showing a figure interrupted while reading, for 10 points, name this commonly painted scene featuring the angel Gabriel telling Mary that she will give birth to the son of God.
ANSWER: Annunciations
17.In 1993, this man received $800,000 from the City of L.A. for an incident at LAX that saw him get roughed up by drug enforcement agents. Tommy Craggs described how this man called him a “joke” during their interview for the Village Voice in which he claimed that “computers” got us to Enron. Ben Revere emulates this man’s timing mechanism, and along with Cesar Geronimo and Jack Billingham, this player was traded from the Astros for Lee May. Also known for telling Billy Beane that he shouldn’t have written Moneyball,for 10 points, name this counterpart to Jon Miller on Sunday Night Baseball, a Hall of Fame second-sacker and annoying ESPN commentator that has a Charles Brockden Brown-loving blog calling for his firing.
ANSWER: Joe Leonard Morgan
18. One of his works describes how the wau and the laua interact in such ways as cutting down palm trees, and thus make up the latmul system. He collaborated on a “photographic study” of body language among the title people in one work, and he responded to Durkheim’s contrast of the sacred and profane in a posthumous publication. In addition toBalinese Character and Angel’s Fear, he wrote an essay on alcoholism from a cybernetic point of view in his essay collection States to an Ecology of Mind, while another work attempted to reconcile Radcliffe-Brown with Benedict in observing a New Guinea tribe from “three points of view.” The author of Mind and Nature,for 10 points, name this author of Naven, the first husband of Margaret Mead.
ANSWER: Gregory Bateson
19. This poem was widely forgotten until it was republished in Thomas Percy's “Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.” In the second stanza, the author speaks of “careless heads with roses bound,” a reference to Greek worship of Aphrodite, and of “no allaying Thames” when speaking of “flowing cups” of wine that have not been watered down. In the various stanzas, the author compares himself to “Fishes that tipple in the deep,” “Enlarged winds that curl the flood,” and “The gods, that wanton in the air.” The author wrote this work, possibly to a woman named Lucy Sacheverell, during his punishment for petitioning the Clergy Act of 1640. Concluding “Angels alone, that soar above, enjoy such liberty,” For 10 points, name this poem concerning stone walls and iron bars by Richard Lovelace.
ANSWER: “To Althea, From Prison”
20. The signing of this agreement was depicted first-hand in photos by Eliphalet Brown and in art by William Heine. Negotiations were aided by a boy who became known as Sam Patch, and were initially carried out by a man named Henry Adams. It was modified four years later by a more detailed agreement named for Townsend Harris, which provided for a fixed scale of import duties. Signed aboard the USS Powhatan, one provision of it mandated hospitality to shipwrecked sailors and their free travel within certain limits. Scrolls created by local artists were named for the so-called “black ships” which enforced this agreement, which brought an end to the “closed country system,” or sakoku. For 10 points, name this 1854 treaty negotiated by Commodore Matthew Perry between the U.S. and Japan.
ANSWER: Treaty of Kanagawa[prompt on Treaty of Amity and Friendship]