ACF Fall 2006
Tossups by Harvard A and Illinois B (Gen. Donald Taylor et al)
1. In one synthesis named for this man, cyanohydrins and aldehydes react in the presence of anhydrous hydrochloric acid to form oxazole. He discovered phenylhydrazine, which when reacted with an aldehyde or ketone, forms enamine, imine, and aminal intermediates in his namesake indole synthesis. In his most famous namesake reaction, water must be removed to prevent the product from reverting to its alcohol and carboxylic acid reactants. Known for that esterification, FTP name this chemist perhaps most famous for depicting complex sugars with straight backbones and 90° bond angles in his eponymous projections.
ANSWER: (Hermann) Emil Fischer
2. A man from this city founded the Camaldolese offshoot of the Benedictines; that man, Saint Romualdo, is often known by a name reflecting his origin here. The CorsiniCanal connects this city to the Adriatic Sea, which is today five miles away. Formerly, it was a thriving port, in its heyday replacing Misenum as the station of the imperial Roman fleet. This city-state was dominated in the late Middle Ages by the Polenta family, who welcomed the exiled Dante Aligheri from Florence to this capital of Romagna. Its San Vitale basilica still contains a mosaic series of Justinian and Theodora’s court, representing its time as the capital of Byzantine Italy. FTP, name this city to which the Western emperors moved after ruling from Milan, which then became the seat of power for the Gothic kingdom of Italy.
ANSWER: Ravenna
3. The cannonball problem asks when the number of cannonballs in a pyramidal stack can be one of these—the answer is only twice, when the number of cannonballs is either 1 or 4900. Lagrange proved that every positive integer can be expressed as the sum of four of these numbers, and the zeta function of two is defined as the sum of their reciprocals. They are always congruent to zero or one modulo four, and their last digit is always 1, 4, 9, 6, or 5. FTP, identify these numbers which are formed by raising an integer to the second power.
ANSWER: Square numbers or Squares
4. This architect was inspired by the nearby Rocky Mountains to create a very large, rugged, concrete home for The National Center for Atmospheric Research. After previously designing the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell and the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, he placed a large Alexander Calder mobile in the middle of his wedge-shaped East Wing of the National Gallery. He has several notable buildings in Boston, including the Christian Science Center, JFK Presidential Library, and Hancock Place. Renowned for his use of glass walls and triangular facades, FTP name this Chinese-American architect best known for the Pyramide de Louvre and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
ANSWER: I(eoh) M(ing) Pei
5. Some of them believed in Yara-Ma-Yha-Who, a vampire who jumped out of fig trees, ate people, and vomited them back up; reborn from the experience, they were unharmed though slightly shorter. Among these people’s creator gods was a female snake named Eingana, and a “rainbow serpent," who inhabits water holes. The Alcheringa is the period before these people’s creation, and their other deities include fairies called the Mimi, who lived in what is now Arnhem Land. The period known as Dreamtime is when they believe the world was created. FTP, name these people to whom Uluru, or Ayer’s Rock, is sacred, the indigenous people of Australia.
ANSWER: Australian Aborigines
6. Restoration of this country’s Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle, including the latter’s famous “Door of No Return,” drew criticism from some African-Americans, who argued that slavery was trivialized by turning Portuguese slave castles into tourist sites. Other tourist sites in this country include the city of Kumasi, the grave of W. E. B. DuBois, and the elaborate Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum. The eastern region of this country is marked by LakeVolta, a huge reservoir created by the Akosombo Dam. Bordered on the north by Burkina Faso and sandwiched between Togo and Côte D’Ivoire, this is, FTP, what country once called the Gold Coast?
ANSWER: Ghana
7. In the publisher’s note to this book he informs the reader that the author moved from Redriff to a house near Newark to avoid his fans, and the title page originally displayed a portrait of that author with the caption “Splendide Mendax.” A group of characters in this book worry that the Earth will collide with a comet due to return in 31 years and continually discuss the sun's health. A notable controversy presented in this work concerns which end of an egg one should use to crack it, the two sides being referred to as “tram-” and “slam-ecksan.” In another part a box is made for the narrator at the behest of Glumdalclitch that is eventually carried out to sea by a bird, which allows him to escape Brobdignag. The narrator also visits the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos on his titular journeys. FTP name this novel by Jonathan Swift.
ANSWER: Gulliver’s Travels
8. The monomers of this substance are moved to their final destination bound to the carrier bactoprenol. It is resistant to proteases because it contains D-amino acids, but lysozyme can break down its beta-1-4 linkages between repeating units of N-acetyl-muramic acid and N-acetyl-glucosamine. It is the target of some antibiotics, including penicillin, which blocks the action of the enzymes responsible for crosslinking the polysaccharide chains via tetrapeptides. FTP name this polymer that accounts for 90% of the dry weight of Gram-positive bacteria, the primary constituent of bacterial cell walls.
ANSWER: peptidoglycan [do NOT prompt on or accept 'proteoglycan']
9. Thomas Tatton claimed that there was a crowd of only thirty thousand people at this event, while James Wroe, in the Observer, gave the highest estimate at 153 thousand. Wroe and Richard Carlile were imprisoned for publicizing the story of this incident, which inspired Percy Bysshe Shelley to write The Masque of Anarchy. Samuel Bamford was also imprisoned after this event perpetrated by the 15th Hussars and the Cheshire Volunteers, and Home Secretary Sidmouth responded by proposing the Six Acts. The trouble began when Henry Hunt was arrested and prevented from speaking, and eleven people were killed when cavalry troops overwhelmed the demonstrators in Manchester. FTP, name this 1819 incident, with a name reminiscent of Napoleon’s final defeat.
ANSWER: Peterloo Massacre [or massacre of St. Peter’s Field]
10. One character in this novel writes a letter to her employer describing the execution of Lady Jane Grey in the Tower of London. That character is courted by a man who offers her a part in a play put on by his sister Pensil, Mr. Bantling. The protagonist’s stepdaughter is courted by Ned Rosier, but their love leads to Pansy being shut away in a convent. She had married her husband at the suggestion of Madame Merle after repeatedly rejecting Caspar Goodwood and Lord Warburton. While her uncle lies on his deathbed, her cousin, Ralph Touchett, asks his father to give her half of his fortune “to put a little wind in her sails.”Ultimately, however, her independence leads her into an unhappy marriage with Gilbert Osmond. FTP name this novel about Isabel Archer by Henry James.
ANSWER: Portrait of a Lady
11. Founded in Geneva in 1908, it established a counterpart for the youth audience in 1925 which shot to major popularity in the 1950s under the leadership of Alexei Adzhubei. In 1992, it was sold to the Greek Giannikos brothers, who shut it down in 1997 upon the claim that it could not turn a profit because its employees were constantly drunk. It was run by a police agent attempting to destroy it from 1912 to 1913; in 1917, it publicized the April Theses and, in April 1953, it published a retraction admitting that the Doctors Plot had been fabricated. It normally did not discuss international relations, leaving that sphere to Izvestiya. FTP, a name meaning “Truth” adorned what Moscow-based newspaper, the official Communist Party organ for the entirety of the USSR’s existence?
ANSWER: Pravda
12. This man’s biographers include Joseph Dorfman and J.P. Diggin, who called him “The Bard of Savagery.” Early in his career this man wrote an article on “The Barbarian Status of Women,” and he was the original translator of Ferdinand Lasalle’s Science and the Workingmen. Longer works include The Instict of Workmanship and The Place of Science in Modern Civilization, and along with Charles Beard and John Dewey he founded the NewSchool for Social Research. Best known for a work containing a section on the fur trade, this is, FTP, what economist, who coined the term ‘conspicuous consumption” in his The Theory of the Leisure Class?
ANSWER: Thorstein Veblen
13. In a story by this man the protagonist injures his head while rushing to read The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, leading him to convalesce in the title region, while Ryan quests to identify the assassin of Fergus Kilpatrick in another. The author Jaromir Hladik is persecuted by the Nazi Julius Rothe in “The Secret Miracle,” and other characters from his works include a man who develops perfect memory after being thrown from a horse and Yu Tsun, a Chinese spy for Imperial Germany being pursued by Captain Richard Madden. In addition to “Funes, the Memorious” and “The Garden of Forking Paths,” he wrote about a “Lottery in Babylon” and of an author praised for exactly rewriting Don Quixote. FTP name this author, whose most famous works include “El Aleph” and “The Library of Babel.”
ANSWER: Jorge Luis Borges
14. David Lack, who in 1937 was the first to do a modern study on them, popularized their collective name and made the important observation that no reproduction occurred between different species. They are currently divided into four genera, though it has been proposed to group them into the single genus Geospiza, which is currently reserved for the ground variety, while others include the vegetarian, mangrove, and warbler. Derived from the seeds they eat, the primary differences among them are the sizes and shapes of their beaks. FTP name this group of avians found primarily on the Galapagos Islands that was crucial to the development of the theory of evolution by their namesake.
ANSWER: Darwin’s finches [accept Galapagos finches before 'Galapagos']
15. He painted a portrait of Théodore Duret holding a top hat in his right hand, and in another of his works, painted a woman, with her head turned to the right, wearing a pinkish-purple dress, a work entitled Mother of Pearl and Silver. He explained his thoughts on art in Ten O'Clock Lecture, and another of his works shows a young girl in a white dress leaning on the titular instrument being played by an elderly woman in black, a painting entitled At the Piano. Joanna Hiffernan was the model in his painting The White Girl, which shows his concern with the beautiful arrangement of colors. He became bankrupt after suing art critic John Ruskin for criticism of his work Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket. His best-known work was sneezed on by the fictional character Mr. Bean and is entitled Arrangement in Grey and Black. FTP, name this American artist most famous for a painting of his mother.
ANSWER: James Whistler
16. This law explains why the theory of Berthelot and Thomsen was incorrect, and Loschmidt's Paradox pointed out that a problem with another scientist's H-theorem could lead to a situation in which this was violated. Using the Stirling approximation solved another potential violation of this law, in which a partition is removed between two identical samples of gas, known as the Gibbs Paradox. An imaginary creature sorting particles based on energy, Maxwell's Demon, could not violate it even though it was designed to. Originally stated by both Kelvin and Clausius, who said that heat could not flow from a cold object to a hot one spontaneously, FTP name this law of thermodynamics commonly stated as for any spontaneous process, the entropy of the universe increases.
ANSWER: Second Law of Thermodynamics
17. It contains direct quotes from Psalms 19:9 and Matthew 18:7. Its strongest language comes when its speaker intones that “every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword” in revenge for “the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil.” It justified the contemporary conflict with the comment that one side “accept[ed] war rather than let [the nation] perish.” The speech also offers reconciliation, as when its speaker notes that “fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away,” and the speaker then declares his “malice for none” and “charity for all.” FTP, name this speech given on March 4, 1865 by a recently re-elected president.
ANSWER: Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address [prompt on partial answer]
18. This artist once completed a series with gouache and uncolored paper while bedridden, and those images are presented in a book interspersed with handwritten text. That series features many images related to the circus or to the theater, including The Sword Swallower, Cirque, The Clown, and Pierrot’s Funeral. The most iconic image this artist created for that series shows a black, stylized man against a deep blue sky with geometric yellow stars, entitled Icarus. Along with the 1947 series Jazz, this French artist painted a colorful canvas with a woman herding goats with a flute, many nude people lying down, and a scene that would be recreated in The Danse. FTP, name this French artist of The Joy of Life, the leader of the Fauves.
ANSWER: Henri Matisse
19. In 2005, this state’s elected treasurer, Mike Coffman, resigned his post to join the Marines and spent several months in Iraq before returning to run for secretary of state in 2006. Next week, voters in this state will decide on Amendment 36, which proposes to split the state’s nine electoral votes proportionally according to its popular vote in future presidential elections. Opponents argue that the amendment will backfire due to the close party divisions indicated by Republican Wayne Allard and Democrat Ken Salazar splitting this state’s Senatorial delegation, and by the neck-and-neck race between Republican Bob Beauprez and Democrat Bill Ritter to replace retiring incumbent Bill Owens in its 2006 gubernatorial election. FTP, name this state whose other recent politicians include the party-switching Ben Nighthorse Campbell, anti-immigration zealot Tom Tancredo, and Salazar’s 2004 Senate opponent, Pete Coors.
ANSWER: Colorado
20. One of his works contains an epigram from W.B. Yeats’ play The King’s Threshold, and in one of his poems he remarks that “I, too, saw God through mud” and that “merry it was to laugh there.” He laments the sun’s inability to revive a dead man in another poem, “Futility,” while “Wild With All Regrets” is a revised version of a poem in which he entreats a friend to “Carry my crying spirit till it's weaned,” “A Terre.” In a poem based on the story of Abraham and Isaac he claims, “the old man…slew his son, / and half the seed of Europe one-by-one,” but better known are a poem that asks “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?” and one about “that old lie.” FTP name this WWI poet, best-known for “Anthem for Doomed Youth” and “Dulce et Decorum Est”
ANSWER: Wilfred Owen
TB. It was originally called dysthymia or cyclothymia, and it was first described in the 2nd century by Aretaeus of Cappadocia. Scientists have not determined the reason why the first episode of this disorder occurs on average ten years earlier in each successive generation, but a predisposition to it has been linked to a dominant gene on chromosome 11. This disorder has often been linked to creativity, and both Anne Sexton’s and Sylvia Plath’s mental breakdowns were probably the result of it. Lithium can help control the fluctuations of amines that cause swings between euphoria and despair in, FTP, what mood disorder that was formerly called manic depression?
ANSWER: bipolar disorder [accept manic depression before it is mentioned]
ACF Fall 2006
Bonuses by Harvard A and Illinois B (Gen. Donald Taylor et al)
1. FTPE, answer the following about Charleston and the Civil War.
[10] The Civil War began when Confederate troops opened fire upon this Charleston fort in 1861.
ANSWER: FortSumter
[10] This man commanded the CSA to victory at FortSumter over the Union, and later, with the help of Joseph Johnston, commanded the CSA to another victory at the First Battle of Bull Run.
ANSWER: P.G.T. Beauregard
[10] This fortification on MorrisIsland that covered the southern approach to Charleston harbor was attacked in July of 1863 by the Union, and resulted in the death of Robert Gould Shaw.