University of Florida---SunshineState Invitational 2007
Round #10
1. This condition is a disorder in which the patient’s strong ethical and altruistic impulses conflict with “extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature.” The patient is driven to commit acts such as masturbating into a piece of liver, but feels guilty rather than satisfied afterwards. Originally diagnosed by Dr. Spielvogel, this condition is believed to derive from the mother-child relationship. Its namesake is a Jewish civil servant from New Jersey whose lovers included Mary Jane Reed, alias the Monkey, and who grew up under the influence of a perpetually constipated father and a domineering mother. FTP, name this condition and you’ll have named the most famous novel of Philip Roth.
Answer: Portnoy’s Complaint
2. According to some traditions, one of these will emerge once every seven years. The most notable was captured by the poet Finneces who at the time was mentoring the youth, Demne. The catch was made at the River Boyne, below a ring of hazel trees whose nuts this creature was said to consume. When Demne was told to prepare it for eating, he burnt his thumb on its flesh. After sucking the sore to alleviate his pain, Demne suddenly gained a vast awareness of the world and became known as Finn MacCool. FTP, identify this magical fish from Celtic mythology.
Answer: Salmon of Knowledge or Salmon of Wisdom
3. The sides were polished, the top was netted, and the only source of light was from room ambience. Habitants would spend anywhere from 30 days to two years inside it, isolated from any outside contact except for when a hand would drop them food. Upon being removed from this inverted V-shaped chamber, most individuals were found to be psychotic beyond recovery, offering evidence about the importance of social interaction in the development of rhesus monkeys. FTP, identify this apparatus used in a study of clinical depression by psychologist Harry Harlow.
Answer: pit of despair
4. The company behind this series of devices was also responsible for Micro Machines, Pound Puppies, and Sky Dancers and was the third largest US toymaker before being purchased by Hasbro in 1998. That company was involved in a 1992 copyright lawsuit against Nintendo of America, who had accused that this product created a derivative version of a copyrighted video game by illegally modifying its programmed gameplay. These modifications could be made by inserting a game cartridge into this device, then entering a sequence of letters using a pointing hand from a special start-up screen. FTP, name this Galoob product that would grant gamers cheats, not wishes.
Answer: Game Genie
5. Its main offices are located on One Lime Street. Whenever news is announced in its main building, the Lutine Bell is rung beforehand- once for bad and twice for good. Founded in a London coffeehouse, its Marine Collection contains records on ships, cargoes and passenger lists since 1741. FTP, name this British insurance underwriter, recently in the news for not paying casino mogul Steve Wynn $54 million for a damaged Picasso, known throughout the world for insuring all sorts of items from boats to Mary Hart’s legs and Mariah Carey’s voice.
Answer: Lloyd’s of London
6.E.L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel and Robert Coover’s The Public Burning both offer a sympathetic view of this pair. One had been an electrical engineer in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, while the other had a brother who was assigned as a machinist to the Manhattan Project. They were accused of crimes “worse than murder” by trial judge Irving R. Kaufman, who had received testimony from David Greenglass during their trial. Kaufman sentenced them to death under the Espionage Act of 1917, which eventually took place in Sing Sing’s electric chair in 1953. FTP, name this Jewish American couple who infamously passed nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union.
Answer: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
7. This Sassanid king’s empire extended throughout Persia and beyond the Ganges all the way to China. He and his younger brother encountered a djinn whose wife had cuckolded him 570 times. On a trip to visit that brother, Shahzaman, he went home to retrieve something he’d forgotten and found his wife in bed with a black servant. He killed both of them but later witnessed Shahzaman’s wife engaging in similar behavior, which led him to institute his most infamous custom. FTP, name this character in the Arabian Nights, a king who married a new wife each night and executed her at dawn until Shahrazad saved the day by telling him 1001 stories.
Answer: Shahryar (accept alternative pronunciations as long as they’re close)
8. The work of Vincent du Vigneaud led to the synthesis of this pituitary hormone, the first to be produced artificially. One of the two hormones made by the neurohypophysis, its effects include the stimulation of prostaglandin production and the contraction of smooth muscle in the intestines and small arteries. FTP, name this hormone which is also used to facilitate uterine contractions during childbirth and causes the mammary glands to produce milk during nursing.
Answer: oxytocin
9. During this man’s time in Avignon, he came across the inspiration for many of his most famous works, though scholars believe that a certain encounter on Good Friday had the most lasting effect. Those works would include I Trionfi as well as the dialogue Secretum and the treatise De Vita Solitaria. A writer of both Italian and Latin, his Latin works include an epic poem about Scipio Africanus and the biographical series,Concerning Famous Men. Also a prolific poet, 366 poems form his most famous work which glorifies the woman for which he obsessed. FTP, name this Italian writer, whose love for Laura was commemorated in the Canzoniere.
Answer: Petrarch or Francesco Petrarca
10. The Union gunboat New Era was supposed to provide support for its garrison of 550, but Confederate sharpshooters effectively neutralized the crew. A Confederate force of 2,500 surrounded the fort, which was constructed about 40 miles north of Memphis, and stormed it with a mere 100 casualties, killing more than 300 blacks, including women and children. FTP, name this April 1864 battle after which Nathan Bedford Forrest ordered the murder of surrendered black soldiers.
Answer: Battle of FortPillow
11. On one occasion, this character exclaimed, “Besotted Being!” as a retort to the king of a neighboring territory who had professed ignorance of this figure’s gender. His grandfather, one of the least irregular of the Isosceles class, once received four out of seven votes from the Sanitary and Social Board for passing him into the class of the Equal-sided. In a dream, he envisioned descending into the Abyss of No Dimensions, followed by mysterious hallucinations of hyper-shapes. FTP, identify this protagonist of Edwin Abbott’s Flatland, a geometric polygon possessing four equal sides.
Answer:A. Square
12. Antonio Manetti’s The Fat Woodworker tells how this man played a prank on a certain Manetto and caused him to doubt his own identity. He lost out to Lorenzo Ghiberti in the competition to design the Florence baptistery doors, and was forced to work with the same Ghiberti on his best-known project. That project involved completing a seemingly impossible task that Arnolfo di Cambio had left unfinished. This man, who is also famous as the alleged inventor of scientific perspective, accomplished that task by using two separate shells resting on a drum. FTP, name this Renaissance Italian architect who built the dome of the Florence Cathedral.
Answer: Filippo di ser Brunelleschi
13. His only published book was about the primitive system of vowels in the Indo-European languages. He is more famous for a posthumously published book which was compiled by Albert Sechehaye and Charles Bally, based on courses he taught at the University of Geneva between 1906 and 1911. In that book he claims that the linguistic sign is always arbitrary and that in language there are only differences. He also establishes distinctions between synchrony and diachrony, langue and parole, and signifier and signified. FTP, name this linguist whose Course in General Linguistics was a major influence on structuralism and poststructuralism.
Answer: Ferdinand de Saussure
14. The first of these developed in the United States was created in 1954 by physicists Townes, Gordon, and Zeiger, and made use of the relatively low frequency of ammonia. Paramagnetic ones utilize the energy transitions corresponding to the orientations of magnetic dipoles in paramagnetic ions, while hydrogen ones rely on the corresponding frequency of the photon released when a proton and electron have opposite spin. Technologically, they have found a wide range of uses, from amplifying low-noise radio frequencies to serving as time standards in atomic clocks. FTP, identify this type of device that preceded the laser, whose amplifications occur in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Answer: maser
15. It was the site of the home of Louis XIV while the Palace of Versailles was under construction. Named after the tile kilns situated there, it was built by Catherine de Medici, who was homesick for a garden similar to those in her native Italy. After his capture in Varennes, Louis XVI and his family was held captive here until a Parisian mob stormed its namesake palace, forcing them to move into the nearby National Assembly. While the palace was destroyed by fire in 1871, the gardens remain a popular place for many Parisians. FTP, name this garden in Paris located next to the Louvre.
Answer: Tuileries
16. The reaction of 1-Phenylbutan-1-one to Butylbenzene is an example of this process, which, when carried out under strongly acidic conditions, becomes analogous to the Clemmensen reaction especially if the starting material is a base-labile. The Huang-Minlon modification to it involves heating the carbonyl compound in a one pot reaction with a hydrazine hydrate and potassium hydroxide, and its most probable mechanism involves the elimination of an alkyl anion as the final step. FTP, identify this type of reduction named for a pair of German and Russian chemists which transforms a ketone or aldehyde into an alkane.
Answer: Wolff-Kishner reduction
17. University of Wisconsin-Madison instructor, Kevin Barrett, compared the attacks on the WorldTradeTowers to this event in his controversial essay, “Interpreting the Unspeakable: The Myth of 9/11.” In its wake, Georgi Dimitrov, Vasil Tanev, and Blagoi Popov were arrested based on their connections to the Communist organization Comintern, though they were eventually acquitted after the conviction of Marinus van der Lubbe who had been found within the building at the time of the event. Leading to the rise of Adolf Hitler, FTP, what was this 1933 attack on the German parliament?
Answer: Reichstag fire (accept equivalents)
18. The kappa mechanism involves changes in the opacity of the atmospheres of these objects due to changes in the ionization state of helium-4. Their discoverer mainly studied ones found in the Magellanic Clouds and went on to publish those observations in the 1908 paper Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College. They normally are classified as population I giant yellow stars and have a unique property in that their period and luminosity are directly related, allowing them to be used as standard candles. FTP, identify these variable stars first discovered by Henrietta Leavitt.
Answer: Cepheid variables
19. In a poem by Matthew Arnold, this man explains that “Mind is the spell which governs earth and heaven. / Man has a mind with which to plan his safety.” In his poem, Purifications, he developed his idea of soul transmigration, a topic heavily influenced by his mentor, Pythagoras. According to this man, reality is cyclical, which he expounded upon in his poem, On Nature, a work that identifies four immutable elements which he believed composed all matter and that are acted upon by the two active and opposing forces of love and strife. FTP, identify this Greek philosopher who supposedly threw himself into fiery Mount Etna.
Answer: Empedocles
20. Images in the music video for this song include a pair of flying lips, a field of candy canes and lollipops, and the singer in a blue corset bursting from a three-tiered cake and joining two women wrestling in ice cream. Physical health and a respect for females are key points in the song, as the singer doesn’t want to be “treated like clientele” while she’s “up in the gym just working on [her] fitness.” The very definition of the title concept makes “them boys go loco” and is repeatedly emphasized as being both tasty and delicious. FTP, identify this title condition of a song which describes having the qualities of a certain female singer of The Black Eyed Peas.
Answer: “Fergalicious”
21. Although born a Jew, this individual ordered the foundation of a “Universal Religion” and would later abolish state parties. He was once able to disperse a pogrom against the local Chinese population by simply praying in the street, though he may be best remembered for trying to have Andrew Jackson arrested or for banning the use of the word “Frisco” to describe the Bay Area in which his empire was founded. FTP, identify this man who, in 1859, declared himself Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.
Answer: Norton I (accept Joshua Abraham Norton)
22. This man’s son, Wolfgang, is regarded as the founder of colloid chemistry. Also a noted chemist, among this man’s accolades is a namesake dilution law and the advent of a viscometer used in studies of fluid dynamics. His experimental work began in 1875 with an investigation on the law of mass action of water in relation to the problems of chemical affinity. His later work would be utilized by Germany during World War I in the manufacturing of explosives, as he had developed a way for preparing nitric acid through the oxidation of ammonia. FTP, identify this man, whose eponymous process is complemented by that of Haber-Bosch.
Answer: Wilhelm Ostwald
University of Florida---SunshineState Invitational 2007
Round #10
1. Name these children of Aphrodite from clues, FTPE:
[10] Usually said to have been fathered by Dionysus, this fertility god from Lampsacus was renowned for his enormous phallus.
Answer: Priapus
[10] A beautiful youth, this offspring of Aphrodite and Hermes would be forever changed once the lake nymph Salmacis physically merged with him. Today, he is associated with a certain medical condition afflicting those who possess both male and female sex organs.
Answer: Hermaphroditus
[10] One of Aphrodite’s more normal children, this hero of a Virgil classic was the product of Aphrodite’s affair with the mortal Anchises.
Answer: Aeneas
2. The establishment of a military state in Spartan society began around 700 years BC. Identify the following concerning it, FTPE:
[10] This legendary lawgiver of Sparta was the driving factor behind the communalistic and militaristic reforms.
Answer: Lycurgus of Sparta
[10] Lycurgus is credited with this Spartan educational system, in which militia units were responsible for rasing the children of Sparta.
Answer: agoge
[10] Essential to the agoge was this practice, in which an older man served as a mentor for an adolescent boy, forming him to become part of society.
Answer: pederasty
3. FTPE, identify these French literary theorists.
[10] He is not the namesake of an Umberto Eco novel. A professor of the history of systems of thought at the Collége de France, he analyzed discourses and the relation of power and knowledge in works like Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality.
Answer: Michel Foucault
[10] This incredibly prolific critic is perhaps best known for his theory of the death of the author. He analyzed everything from wine to soap advertisements in his Mythologies, and his S/Z [S/Zed] is a hyper-detailed analysis of Balzac’s novella Sarrasine.
Answer: Roland Barthes
[10] Slavoj Zizek is a follower of this psychoanalyst, who claimed that the unconscious is structured like a language and who created the concepts of the mirror stage and the three orders of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real. His major work is the Écrits.
Answer: Jacques Lacan
4. Name the following David Lynch films which weren’t nearly as confusing as Mulholland Drive, FTPE:
[10] Lynch’s first major film was this thriller about a city man who must cope with his unwanted and particularly annoying mutant baby.
Answer: Eraserhead
[10] In this classic, Anthony Hopkins plays an English surgeon who encounters a partially aborted fetus that has reached adulthood working as a freak show exhibit.
Answer: The Elephant Man
[10] After discovering a severed ear, a young man in this film is brought into a world where singers are stalked, people hide in closets, and Dennis Hopper drinks Pabst Blue Ribbon.