TOSSUPS – EMORY (LKW)MOC MASTERS 2002 -- UT-CHATTANOOGA
Questions (mostly) by Laura White, KC Frodyma, and Clay Hambrick
1.It's not your typical Arthurian legend: Guinevere, Merlin, and Lancelot are nowhere in sight, as the pursuit of a mysterious woman has drawn Arthur to Faerie Land, where he meets the virtues of holiness and chastity--or at least their respective human representations, the knights Redcrosse and Britomart. FTP, name this allegory for the religious climate of Elizabethan England, the greatest work of Edmund Spenser.
Answer: The FAERIE QUEENE
2.Richard Dawkins coined the word in The Selfish Gene to describe a means by which cultural evolution can occur. From the Greek for "something imitated" it refers to a unit of information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that replicates within a culture. Picked up by hackers and web surfers, FTP name this word that you might now use to describe an idea, file or website that bounces around the Internet community, ie: "Bert is Evil."
Answer: a MEME
3.Although he'd had just 24 hours of in-flight training before his first solo flight, this man took to the air--and the machines and weapons used in it--very quickly, becoming so feared in the air that British forces named a single month "Bloody April" after he attained 21 air victories against British pilots in that month. By the time he was shot down by Canadian pilot Roy Brown, he had 80 victories his name. FTP, give the real name of this greatest German WWI flying ace and famous enemy of Snoopy.
Answer: Manfred von RICHTHOFEN (prompt on "Red Baron")
4.First and last name's the same, so to earn points, you'll have to give both. Both of these men are biologists: the first a Stanford professor who shared the 1990 Crafoord Prize with E.O. Wilson, and the second the German winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1908. The American has authored Human Natures and The Population Bomb. The German discovered Salvarsan, the first effective treatment for syphilis. FTP, give the common name.
Answer:Paul EHRLICH
5. Born in New Jersey in 1753, this man's military career included a brief stint on the staff of Benedict Arnold, which would not be the first time he came too close to treachery for some people's comfort. He was the first source of power for the New York political machine of Tammany Hall, using it to win a seat in the New York legislature before running for President. FTP, name this first vice-president under Thomas Jefferson and rival of Alexander Hamilton.
Answer: Aaron BURR [yes, it’s fine if they mumble it]
6."The story you are about to hear is a fib, but it's short. The names are made up, but the problems are real." Such problems included "The Case of the Strategic Weather Initiative," "The Case of the Parking Meter Massacre," "The Case of the Masked Avenger," and "The Case of the Willing Parrot." FTP, name this 15 minute short from PBS where the good guys wore calculator holsters and sported the motto "to cogitate and solve."
Answer: MATHNET
7."On the Great Alkali Plain," "The Flower of Utah," "John Ferrier Talks With the Prophet," "A Flight for Life," and "The Avenging Angels" all deal with a murder among the founding Mormons of Utah. They're accompanied by chapter 7, the Conclusion, and Chapter 6, "A Continuation of the Reminiscences of John Watson, M.D," which all together make up "The Country of the Saints," part two (and the considerably less interesting half) of, FTP, what Arthur Conan Doyle novel?
Answer: A STUDY IN SCARLET
8.Possibly the most famous formula in electrochemistry, this equation relates the actual potential of a galvanic cell with the difference between its theoretical potential and the concentrations of species in solution in the cell.
Answer: The NERNST equation
9.They were organized into three unequal division: the cemaat, bolukhalki, and segban. Commanded by an aga, originally celibacy was a requirement, but that was abandoned by the late 16th century. By the late 18th century the original method of recruiting was abandoned. Described in Ivo Andric’s novel The Bridge on the Drina, it consisted of kidnapping Christian youths from the Balkans, who were then converted to Islam. They were finally put down in the Auspicious Incident in 1826, when Sultan Mahmud II declared war on them and exterminated them. FTP, name this elite Ottoman military force.
Answer:Janissary
10.Michael Chabon writes that these "have a hundred variants, from the clay calf that was summoned to life and promptly eaten by two hungry rabbis… to such refinements as von Frankenstein's [man] of quilted corpses, and Gepetto's wooden son." And in writing The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Chabon did considerable research on these creatures in order to describe the most famous of them. FTP, name this mythical creations, the best known of which was shaped from the clay of the River Moldau by the Rabbi Loew of Prague.
Answer: GOLEMs
11.A number of version of completed forms of this work exist, but the best-known is by the composer's student Franz Sussmeyer. The result is one of the most famous masses today, commissioned by Count Walsegg-Stuppach for his dead wife--and, possibly, for the ability to claim the music as his own. FTP, name this work which is now rightly attributed to the composer who died while writing it, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Answer: the REQUIEM
12.When unpolarized light passes through an ordinary polarizer, its electric field becomes constant in direction, but varies in magnitude. This is called linear polarization. However, when unpolarized light passes through a quarter-wave plate, its electric field becomes constant in magnitude, but its orientation rotates. FTP what is the term given to this type of polarization?
Answer: CIRCULAR polarization
13.You can hear his voice in the background on track three of REM's album "Document," saying: "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" The song is "Exhuming McCarthy," and the comment is in response to the senator from Wisconsin's claim that one of this lawyer's associates was a member of a communist organization. FTP, name this frail-looking head of the army council who finally skewered Joseph McCarthy on national television.
Answer: Joseph N. WELCH
14.The Vatican may not have known about this thinker's childhood habit of referring to his collection of natural artifacts as "idols," but it was quite upset enough at his assertion that holiness resided within the material world rather than outside of it. He fared better in the scientific community, playing an important part in the discovery of the famous Piltdown Man, but this was revealed to be a hoax, and suspicions even exist of his conspiring to forge the skull in the first place. FTP, name this paleontologist who is remembered today for his efforts to combine science and religion to explain the theory of evolution.
Answer: Pierre TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
15.If the king of Thebes had only listened to his grandfather or his seer, he probably wouldn't have met such a violent and untimely end. Both Cadmus and Tiresias warned Pentheus about opposing the will of a god. In an attempt to spy on the rites of a group of Maenads, Pentheus dresses in drag, joins the ceremony, and gets ripped limb from limb by a group of women, one of whom is his own mother. FTP, name this bloody tragedy by Euripides that centers around the cult of Dionysus.
Answer: The BACCHAE
16.It was the trial of the century—the 19th century, that is. It began in 1894 when a man was convicted of treason and sent to the penal colony Devil’s Island. Over the next few years, however, evidence of his innocence began to pile up. The scandal ended in 1899 when the accused was finally pardoned by the French president. FTP, identify the affair of this French army captain which prompted Emile Zola to write his famous 1898 letter, “J’accuse”.
Answer: The DREYFUS Affair
17.Easily visible to the unaided eye, this asterism is called "the rainy stars;" either because their rise introduces the rainy autumn season, or because they are nymphs who wept over their brother Hyas after he was killed by a boar. FTP, name this cluster in Taurus which composes the bull's V-shaped head.
Answer: the HYADES
18.Based on data compiled between 1861 and 1957, it demonstrates that when aggregate demand is expanded, unemployment is lowered at the cost of higher inflation. If aggregate demand is contracted, inflation is lowered at the cost of temporarily higher unemployment. FTP, name this curvethat illustrates the short-run tradeoff between unemployment and inflation.
Answer: the PHILLIPS curve
19.Astute moviegoers might have noticed that several scenes in 1999's "Chicken Run,"—most notably Ginger's time spent in solitary confinement—were lifted almost directly from this John Sturges film. Based on the true story of a group of British and American prisoners of war interred together during the second world war, this 1963 film dramatized the story of 75 POWs who managed to tunnel out of their high-security prison camp. FTP, name this film staring Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, and Steve McQueen.
Answer: THE GREAT ESCAPE
20.His novels include The Temple of Gold, Your Turn to Curtsy, My Turn to Bow, Soldier in the Rain, and his recently re-released his first novel, Boys and Girls Together. He also has 2 Oscars for screenwriting, and has said the Cliffs of Insanity were his model for a certain cliff from which Paul Newman and Robert Redford jumped. Perhaps he’s best known for his "retelling" of a fairy tale which answered the question "what happens when the most beautiful girl in the world marries the handsomest prince in the world— and he turns out to be a son of a bitch?" FTP, name this contemporary American novelist.
Answer: William GOLDMAN
21.The lyrics come from a 13th-century manuscript which was found in 1803 in the Benedictine abbey of Benediktbeuern in Germany. It is said that when the composer first saw a printed edition of the manuscript, in 1888, “the poems changed his entire career”. FTP, name this secular cantata by Carl Orff, whose most famous song is the opening “O Fortuna”.
Answer: CARMINA BURANA
22.The name's the same. It refers either to reservists recruited in 1916 as part of an auxillary force of the Royal Irish Constabulary, known for their brutality and distinctive uniforms. Or it's an alcoholic density experiment involving Bass and Guiness. FTP, give the nickname of this Ireland-based British force found complicit in Bloody Sunday, or the drink named after them.
Answer: BLACK AND TANs
23.The son of the king of Aegina, this Argonaut lived a homocide-filled life, killing first his half-brother Phocus, and then, while on the Calydonian boar hunt, his father-in-law Eurytion. However, his most dangerous encounter was with Astydameia, wife of King Acastus, whose unrequited love for him caused the suicide of his first wife and the pillaging of his adopted country, Iolcus. Astydameia's treachery had one good effect, however: the beginning of his friendship with the centaur Chiron, who later raised his son. FTP, name this husband of Thetis and father of Achilles.
Answer: PELEUS
24.An attack against Darwinian theories of gradualism in paleontology, this 1972 proposal points out that the fossil record shows evidence for long intervals of stasis followed by short, revolutionary transitions in which species become extinct and replaced by wholly new forms. FTP, name this evolutionary theory proposed by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould, sometimes referred to as "Punk Eek."
Answer: PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIA (or PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM)
25.We never find out his name. We only know from his story that he was thrown out of school for letting a white benefactor witness some black men start a riot. In his new job in New York, he works at a paint factory until a boiler explodes and he gets lobotomized. Eventually he joins "the brotherhood," for which he writes and ends up speaking out against to incite a full scale riot, then exiles himself underground to a room full of lights. FTP, identify this character, and you'll give the title of the Ellison novel I've just described.
Answer: INVISIBLE MAN [note: do not accept "THE Invisible Man."]
BONI – EMORY (LKW)MOC MASTERS 2002 -- UT-CHATTANOOGA
Questions (mostly) by Laura White, KC Frodyma, and Clay Hambrick
1.FTSNOP, given a description of a limiting value in astrophysics, name it.
5: The minimum distance from a singularity from which light can escape, based on the mass of the singularity.
Answer: SCHWARTZSCHILD RADIUS
10: The maximum mass that a white dwarf can have without collapsing into a neutron star or black hole, equal to about 1.44 solar masses.
Answer: CHANDRASEKHAR LIMIT
15: The minimum mass a dust or gas cloud with a given temperature and density must have in order to collapse into stars.
Answer: JEANS mass
2.Name the Hemingway work from clues (10-5):
10: "Characters" in this book include the real personalities Ezra Pound, Ford Maddox Ford, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
5: Posthumously published, this is an autobiographical account of Hemingway's pre-novelist days in Paris.
Answer: A MOVEABLE FEAST
10: This novel is infused with sport--characters are boxers, bullfighters, fishermen--possibly as a way of showing how its legions of insecure male characters compensate.
5: All those "insecure males" have reasons: one is impotent, one is the victim of anti-Semitism--and all are scarred by the shadow of WWI.
Answer: THE SUN ALSO RISES
10: The three parts of this novel are called "Bimini," "Cuba," and "At Sea."
5: The main character is Thomas Hudson, an artist loosely based on Hemingway himself.
Answer: ISLANDS IN THE STREAM
3.Identify the following ancient peoples of Central America FTPE.
10) Their domain included Guatemala and the Yucatan peninsula. Famous for their Long Count calendar, their cities included Copan, Tikal, and Palenque.
Answer:Maya
10) The Maya were preceded by this culture, centered in San Lorenzo. They built clay pyramids, and introduced the bar and dot counting system and the calendar.
Answer:Olmec
10) This culture rose to prominence between the time of the Maya and the Aztecs. Their artistic style can be seen in some of the buildings of Chichen Itza, and at their capital, Tula.
Answer:Toltec
4. There may indeed be a penguin on the telly, depending on what animated works are on. FTPE name these penguins:
a) Don Adams was the voice of this illogically-named TV penguin whose sidekick was the walrus Chumley.
Answer:Tennessee Tuxedo
b) In Nick Park’s Oscar-winning short The Wrong Trousers, Wallace takes this nefarious crook in as a lodger.
Answer:Feathers McGraw (accept either name)
c) In Toy Story 2, two different performers supply the voice of this toy penguin that Woody tries to rescue from the yard sale – Joe Ranft before the throat problem is fixed, and Robert Goulet as his singing voice at the end.
Answer:Wheezy
5.Identify the following folks associated with intelligence testing, FTPE.
(A) This British mathematician argued that conversation was the key to determining system intelligence. His test of artificial intelligence is still considered the holy grail of the subject today.
Answer: Alan TURING
(B) This French psychologist developed the formula for calculating intelligence quotient by dividing mental age by biological age while studying mentally retarded schoolchildren. The 1908 version of his test has remained the basis of IQ testing to the present day.
Answer: Alfred BINET (Bih-nay)
(C) As president of the American Psychological Association during World War I, this man assisted military efforts by developing a group test of intelligence called the Army Alpha. He is also known for his work with primates.
Answer: Robert YERKES
6.Identify the architects based on a description FTPE.
(10) A hallmark of his designs is a systemized ground plan, with a central hall surrounded by rooms grouped in absolute symmetry. He designed the Teatro Olimpico, complete with permanent scenery with architectural perspective. The Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery is designed in a style reminiscent of his.
Answer:Andrea PALLADIO
(10) Prince Eugene of Savoy commissioned him to build his Winter Palace in Vienna and to collaborate with Johann von Hildebrandt on Eugene’s Summer Palace. His most famous work is the Kalskirche or Church of San Carlo Borromeo, built in an opulent Italian style.
Answer:Johann Bernhard Fischer von ERLACH
(10) He, along with Amedee Ozenfant, founded the architectural journal L’Esprit Nouveau. Essentially a functionalist, he focused on modern materials like ferroconcrete, sheet glass, and synthetics. His most famous works include Palace for The League of Nations, Unite d’Habitation, and Notre Dame-du-Haut.