Questions by Harvard B
(Kyle Haddad-Fonda, Adam Hallowell, John Lesieutre, Sam Lederer, and Dan Okobi)
January 13, 2006
TOSSUPS
LITERATURE (5):
TOSSUP
Its author was inspired by a 1966 family vacation to Pennsylvania and by Shakespeare’s Henry V. On the back cover of the newest edition is a quote from Ken Burns, who wrote that it “changed [his] life”; it opens with a page of quotes from Woodrow Wilson, E. M. Forster, John Brown, and Robert E. Lee. The principal characters are Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, commander of the 20th Maine Infantry, and James Longstreet. The author’s son added a sequel, The Last Full Measure, and a prequel, Gods and Generals. FTP, name this Michael Shaara novel set at Gettysburg.
ANSWER: The Killer Angels
TOSSUP
Five of them are named for women of Greek myth: Chloe, Baucis, Pyrrha, Irene, and Penthesilea. Irene, we are told, is “a name for a city in the distance” that changes “if you approach.” Penthesilea is so sprawling that it can never be seen, found, or escaped. After visiting Pyrrha, Marco Polo’s “mind goes on containing a great number of cities [he has] never seen and never will see.” FTP, these cities are among the title locales of what Italo Calvino novel?
ANSWER: Invisible Cities
TOSSUP
The name’s the same. One is Katerina Ismailova, who is married to Zinovy, but falls in love with the servant Sergei. When she and Sergei are discovered, they murder Zinovy, whose body is found in the cellar on the date of her wedding to Sergei, prompting their unsuccessful attempt to flee Minsk. The other is the wife of the Thane of Glamis, who prods her husband to murder King Duncan and seize the throne, but who then falls victim to a celebrated hand-washing compulsion. FTP, give the common name of the tragic leading ladies of a Nikolai Leskov short story and a William Shakespeare play.
ANSWER: Lady Macbeth (prompt on Macbeth)
TOSSUP
She turned down the National Medal for the Arts in 1997 and refused to attend an American poetry symposium at the White House in protest of the Iraq War. She wrote the poetry collections Leaflets and The Will to Change, but is more famous for her earlier Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law. Last year, she won the National Book Critics Circle Award for School Among the Ruins. FTP, name this American feminist poet, who won the National Book Award for Diving into the Wreck.
ANSWER: Adrienne Rich
TOSSUP
First published in Le Gaulois in 1884, it was the inspiration for Henry James’s short story “Paste.” Its main character, Madame Loisel, is obsessed with luxury but is, instead, married to a middle-class clerk in the Ministry of Education. She loses the title object, secretly buys an expensive replacement, and spends the next ten years in poverty to pay off the debt. Ironically, at the story’s end, the original object is revealed to be a cheap paste replica. FTP, identify this short story about a piece of jewelry by Guy de Maupassant.
ANSWER: “The Necklace”
HISTORY (6):
TOSSUP
This dynasty’s first emperor had remained loyal to his predecessor until his son, Li Shi-Min, tricked him into sleeping with an imperial concubine, thus forcing him to join the already brewing revolt. Li Shi-Min led the rebellion and later became this dynasty’s second emperor. About 140 years of prosperity known as the “Fullness” followed, but the An Lu-Shan Rebellion crippled this dynasty, which never regained its former glory. FTP, name the Chinese dynasty that ruled from 618 to 907 and which is associated with poets Du Fu and Li Po.
ANSWER: Tang Dynasty
TOSSUP
It was under the patronage of this grandson of Sundiata Keita that Sankore University reached its height, attracting Islamic scholars to make the long trek across the Sahara to study there. After running out of money one time in 1324, he had to take out a loan in order to make that same journey home. He had given away so much gold on the outbound trip, however, that it took the Egyptian economy 20 years to recover from inflation. FTP, name this so-called “Lion,” famous for his pilgrimage to Mecca, under whom the Mali Empire reached its height.
ANSWER: Mansa Kankan Musa I (accept Mansa Musa; prompt on Lion of Mali before the word “Lion”)
TOSSUP
His daughter eloped with John C. Frémont, but he later advocated many of Frémont’s proposals. In 1851, he was denied a sixth term in the Senate because he had declared himself to be “against the institution of slavery.” His unwavering support of hard currency earned him the nickname “Old Bullion” and his devotion to Jacksonian democracy included support of legislation for railroads, telegraph lines, and territorial expansion in the West. FTP, name this man who had once dueled with Andrew Jackson, but who became the latter’s staunch supporter as a senator from Missouri.
ANSWER: Thomas Hart Benton
TOSSUP
The first one was an impromptu celebration of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in 1886. The second one, held three years later, marked the centennial of George Washington’s inauguration. The most recent was held in 2000 after the Yankees won the World Series. The name comes from the paper used in stock brokerages to list stock quotes, but modern day ones mostly use shredded office paper. FTP, name this celebratory event held in Manhattan’s “Canyon of Heroes.”
ANSWER: ticker-tape parade
TOSSUP
A craze for these began in 1593 when Charles de l’Ecluse received some from Ogier de Busbecq. By 1623, certain breeds were worth as much as 1,000 florins. Their unique spots and markings were due to infection with a mosaic virus. A record was set in 1635 with the sale in Haarlem of a single one for 6,000 florins. Two years later, the bubble burst and the Netherlands was thrust into economic depression. FTP, name the flower of Turkish origin that is still associated with that country.
ANSWER: tulip (prompt on bulb)
TOSSUP
Famous instances in history include what happened during the Cultural Revolution to Deng Xiaoping’s son Pufeng, who was paralyzed in the incident. In another legendary instance, painter and sculptor Amadeo Modigliani did it to his mistress. In 1958, Iraqi ministers in Baghdad suffered the same fate. Another famous incident involved the dead body of Huguenot leader Gaspard de Coligny and signaled the beginning of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. FTP, the most famous instances of what violent act, however, occurred in 1948, 1419, and 1618 in Prague?
ANSWER: defenestration
SCIENCE (6):
TOSSUP
A special intramolecular case of this reaction is termed the Diekmann condensation. At least one of the starting molecules must have a hydrogen alpha to the carbonyl, since deprotonation to an enolate ion is its first step. The next step is the enolate’s attack on an ester to give a beta-keto ester. The reaction is an important way to form carbon-carbon bonds and is used in nature to build fats. FTP, name this variant of aldol chemistry that begins with two esters.
ANSWER: Claisen condensation
TOSSUP
Its quantum mechanical analog is Ehrenfest’s Theorem, which equates the expectation value of the gradient of the potential function with the time derivative of the expectation value of the momentum. This confirms the correspondence principle for quantum theory, so that the center of a wave packet behaves like a classical particle. In the relativistic regime its most familiar form can be recovered by introducing relativistic mass, but only for transverse forces. FTP, name this physical law which, in the classical approximation and for constant mass, can be stated as F = ma.
ANSWER: Newton’s 2ndLaw
TOSSUP
With Euler, he is the namesake of the class of ordinary differential equations of the form x2u+bxu+cu = 0 [READ: x squared u double prime plus b x u prime plus c u equals 0]. With Benet, his name is attached to a formula generalizing the multiplicativity of the determinant to non-square matrices. With Riemann, he names two partial differential equations that are a criterion for a complex function to be holomorphic. Name this French mathematician who is the namesake of sequences whose terms fall increasingly close together, but who, FTP, is perhaps most familiar to linear algebra students as the namesake, with Schwarz, of an inequality comparing the norms of two vectors to the magnitude of their inner product.
ANSWER: Augustin Louis Cauchy
TOSSUP
Their intersections often produce séracs, or pinnacles of ice. A bergschrund is a wide one occurring between the rocky mountain wall of a cirque and the ice that occupies it. They are formed because ice at the bottom of a glacier moves faster than ice at the top, which is deformed plastically as the glacier moves along. They present a special hazard for mountaineers, many of whom train in techniques to rescue climbers who fall into them. FTP, identify this geological term, which refers to cracks in glacial ice.
ANSWER: crevasse
TOSSUP
This phase is broken down into five stages: leptotene, zygotene, pachytene, diplotene, and diakinesis. In leptotene, chromatin condenses into threadlike structures. During the zygotene phase, a small amount of DNA that did not replicate during S phase replicates. More importantly, the process of synapsis is complete and homologous chromosomes join into tetrads. It is during pachytene that the important process of crossing over takes place. FTP, name this phase, the first of meiosis.
ANSWER: Prophase I (prompt on Prophase, Meiosis or Meiosis I)
TOSSUP
In concentrated sulfuric acid, it can be protonated to the nitronium ion, which can then add to a benzene ring in an aromatic electrophilic substitution; it is thus important as a starting material in the production of TNT and other nitro-benzene compounds. It has a low pKa of -2 and when it is concentrated in solution, it is described as “fuming.” Produced commercially via the Ostwald Process, which uses ammonia as a starting material, this is, FTP, what strong acid with molecular formula HNO3?
ANSWER: nitric acid
RELIGION/MYTHOLOGY/PHILOSOPHY (3):
TOSSUP
His recent works include 2003’s Pushing Time Away: My Grandfather and the Tragedy of Jewish Vienna. He is a founding member of the Great Ape Project and was an unsuccessful Green Party candidate for the Australian senate. He advanced preference utilitarianism in his 1979 book Practical Ethics and currently holds posts at the University of Melbourne and at Princeton University. FTP, identify the philosopher best known for his argument that donating at least 10% of one’s income to world poverty relief is a moral duty for citizens of affluent nations.
ANSWER: Peter Singer
TOSSUP
In the tapestry “The Unicorn in Captivity,” the unicorn is chained to this type of tree, which symbolizes both fertility and the Church because a single one of its fruits contains many seeds. It also symbolizes righteousness in Judaism because it is said to have 613 seeds, the same as the number of mitzvot in the Torah. In addition, it was the symbol of the goddess Hera, who is often depicted holding one. FTP, what fruit is most significant mythologically, however, because Persephone ate six of its seeds in the Underworld?
ANSWER: pomegranate
TOSSUP
First published in 1830, this book begins with the testimony of 11 witnesses who swear that it is true. It was a translated work, but no one has seen the original save those witnesses and the translator, who uncovered the plates on which it was written while living in Palmyra, New York. Among its many books are the Book of Mosiah, four Books of Nephi, and the Book of Moroni. FTP, name this holy text revealed to Joseph Smith.
ANSWER: The Book of Mormon
FINE ARTS (3):
TOSSUP
Just seven years after it was painted, it made a notable appearance in the animated short “Porky in
Wackyland.” In “Looney Tunes: Back in Action,” Elmer Fudd runs into some trouble with his gun while trying to hunt Bugs Bunny inside this 1931 painting. Like the clock on the piece of cloth, the clock on the table, and the clock on the tree, Elmer’s gun goes limp. Bugs Bunny’s sarcastic exclamation, “that’s surreal!” is the obvious next line. FTP, name this painting, one of the most famous by Salvador Dali.
ANSWER: The Persistence of Memory
TOSSUP
It was built to house the Sancta Camisia, the veil of the Virgin, which had been given to the namesake town by Charles the Bald, a grandson of Charlemagne. It boasts in total 26,900 square feet of stained glass windows, which illustrate the Bible, the lives of saints, and traditional crafts of France, but it is more famous for the elaborate labyrinth painted on its floor. FTP, name this cathedral, which is hailed as the world’s premier example of Gothic architecture.
ANSWER: Cathedral of Our Lady in Chartres (accept Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres)
TOSSUP
First and last names required; the name is the same. The father learned the violin against his parents’ wishes, founded his own orchestra, and toured all over Europe. The son followed a music career against his father’s wishes, formed his own orchestra, and became his father's rival. The son wrote two operettas, The Gypsy Baron and Die Fledermaus. FTP, what name is shared by a father andhis more famous son, whose more than 400 waltzes included Tales from the Vienna Woods and The Blue Danube?
ANSWER: Johann Strauss
GEOGRAPHY/SOCIAL SCIENCE (2):
TOSSUP
Its most important holiday is July 5, when its legislature, the Tynwald, moves to St. John’s from Douglas and has its session outdoors. The Tynwald continues to issue this island’s own currency, on par with the British pound. The island’s flag depicts three legs with spur-clad feet on a red field and it is located approximately equidistant from Scotland, England, and Northern Ireland, this island was the birthplace of the BeeGees. FTP, name this tiny island in the Irish Sea whose native language is Manx.
ANSWER: Isle of Man
TOSSUP
Goff, Shughart, and Tollison used this economic phenomenon to explain data that, since the designated hitter rule came into effect in 1973, American League batters have been hit by pitches 10% more often than National League batters. A more common example of this problem is fire insurance, which increases the temptation for people to commit arson. FTP, identify this term for a case in which a contract shields a person from the full effect of problematical behavior, increasing the risk of that behavior.
ANSWER: moral hazard
MISCELLANEOUS (1):
TOSSUP
Alice Kober gave him the clue he needed to accomplish his major work when she noticed that certain words had changing word endings, which she believed to be declensions like those in Latin or Greek. Using this clue, this man made grids to associate the symbols on the tablets with consonants and vowels. He did not know which sounds corresponded to the letters, but he started to guess. FTP, name this English archaeologist famous for deciphering the Minoan language that Arthur Evans dubbed “Linear B.”
ANSWER: Michael Ventris
BONUSES
LITERATURE (6):
BONUS
This collection of ten poems in a pastoral setting is modeled to a large degree on the Idylls of Theocritus, though it incorporates more political themes. For ten points each,
[10] First, name this collection, the earliest of the three majors works of Virgil.
ANSWER: Eclogues
[10] This speaker of parts of Eclogues I and VII is occasionally identified with Virgil himself.
ANSWER: Tityrus
[10] The fourth eclogue tells of the birth of a child who will return Rome to the Golden Age, but it is unclear exactly who this child is meant to be. While early Christians interpreted it as foretelling the birth of Christ, many scholars believe it refers to an awaited child of Antony and what woman, whose marriage to Antony was arranged by the Pact of Brundisium?
ANSWER: Octavia
BONUS
Answer the following questions about a recent novel for ten points each.
[10] Identify the 2003 novel by Mark Haddon in which the protagonist, fifteen-year-old Christopher Boone, attempts to solve a neighborhood mystery and journeys to London.
ANSWER: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
[10] Both Christopher’s ability to understand others’ emotions and his mathematical precocity stem from what mental disorder?
ANSWER: autism (accept Asperger’s syndrome)
[10] Highlighting Christopher’s mathematical interests and his view of the world as masking an underlying order with apparent chaos, what are used to number the book’s chapters?
ANSWER: prime numbers
BONUS
For ten points each, name the following works of 20th century literature set in the Middle East.
[10] This novel by Naguib Mafooz, the first of his Cairo Trilogy, follows the family of al-Sayyid Ahmad just after World War I.
ANSWER: Palace Walk (accept Bayn al-Qasrayn)