ACF Fall 2006
Tossups by Matt Keller
1. Its capital may have been established as early as the 9th century CE, though it was not designated as such until the reign of Kossoi, and it was occupied for a time before being freed by Sulaiman-Mar. This empire’s first great ruler expanded it by defeating the Dogon and Fulani, as well as expelling the Tuareg and capturing the key trading center of Jenne. It met its end nearly a century and a half later under the rule of Issihak II, when Judar Pasha led Moroccan forces to victory at the Battle of Tondibi. It had reached its greatest height under Askia Muhammad, who usurped the throne shortly after Sonni Ali’s death. FTP name this west African empire with capital at Gao that flourished in the late 15th and 16th centuries after the decline of the Mali empire.
ANSWER: Songhai Empire [or Songhay]
2. In one of this man’s stories the cab driver Iona prolongs fares unnecessary in order to tell passengers about his recently deceased son. The title character of another story looks through a porthole of an infirmary ship to see Chinese men shouting “It sings! It sings!,” while in a better-known work Nikolai becomes nostalgic for the country life as he dreams of growing the title fruit. In addition to “Gusev” and “Gooseberries,” this man wrote a story in which a man vacationing at Yalta meets Anna Sergeevna von Diederitz, the mysterious canine-loving title character. Better known are plays such as The Wood Demon, which was later adapted into a play about a burnt-out intellectual who incurably lusts after Yelena, the wife of Professor Alexandr Serebryakov. Other subjects of his dramas include the estate of Madame Ranevskaya and the Prozorov family along with Konstantin Treplev, who leaves the title bird at the feet of Nina Zaretchyn. FTP name this author of The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya, and The Seagull.
ANSWER: Anton Chekhov
3. The earliest member of this taxonomic group, found in 1994, is distinguished from earlier groups in part by a thickening of the tooth enamel. A lower jaw discovered at Koro Toro in northern Chad turned out to be from a new variety, and the first source of the most recent variety was a child's skull found at Taung. Footprints discovered in Laetoli showed that the most famous variety developed a forward-pointing big toe and arched feet, though Hadar was the source for the best example of this genus: Lucy. Coined by Raymond Dart to mean "southern ape," FTP name this genus of hominins that lived from about 5.3 to 1.8 million years ago, and includes such species as africanus and afarensis.
ANSWER: Australopithecus [accept Australopiths or Australopithecines; prompt on 'hominids' or 'hominins' before "genus"]
4. Scientists at Los Alamos National Lab recently announced that they could predict the timing of earthquake-like events that produce ‘glitches’ in these astronomical bodies. The accretion type of this object results from a particular kind of binary system, while another variety is powered by the decay of an extremely strong magnetic field. These high field strengths lead to the lighthouse effect, which, coupled with the misalignment of their magnetic and rotational axes, explain their basic properties. First dubbed Little Green Men by Jocelyn Bell Burnell, FTP name these rotating neutron stars that emit electromagnetic radiation detected at regular intervals on earth.
ANSWER: pulsars
5. In the first stanza of this poem, the author tells his beloved that “the last age should show your heart” after their passions subside. The speaker’s desire runs so deep that he would love her “ten years before the flood,” but she could, “if [she] please, refuse / Till the conversion of the Jews.” The second stanza expresses the author’s angst about the future, when “Thy beauty shall no more be found,” so he comes back to suggest that they “roll all [their] strength and all / [Their] sweetness up into one ball” near the end. Opening with the conjecture “Had we but world enough, and time,” FTP name this poem in which the author hears “Time’s winged chariot hurrying near,” the most famous work of Andrew Marvell.
ANSWER: “To His Coy Mistress”
6. Early in his reign, this ruler had to squelch two major rebellions: one led by his half-brother Thankmar, and another by his brother Henry. He defeated Berengar of Ivrea to marry the Burgundian princess Adelaide, and in so doing, gained the additional title King of the Lombards. Much of his ruling strength came from his namesake system of installing his own bishops, and later in his rule, he deposed John XII in favor of Leo VIII for the papacy. Another rebellion, this one by his son Liudolf, was ended by an invasion of the Magyars, whom this ruler soundly defeated at Lechfeld. Crowned King of the Germans after the death of his father, Henry the Fowler, FTP name this man who, in 962, became the first ruler since Charlemagne to hold the title Holy Roman Emperor.
ANSWER: Otto I [or Otto the Great]
7. A band by this name saw little success with early singles such as “Call me what you like,” prompting guitar player Dominic Scott to leave the group. They made headlines over summer 2006 with singer Tom Chaplin’s stint in rehab and the release of their second album, Under the Iron Sea, featuring the single “Is it any wonder?” A series of computer games and their lead character also bear this name; in those games, this person visits Fribbulus Xax and uses the Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket to defeat Boobus Toober, the Shikadi, and the Vorticons while avoiding the Dopefish. FTP, give the common name of the British trio which included “Somewhere Only We Know” on their album Hopes and Fears, and the secret identity of eight-year-old genius Billy Blaze, who becomes the “Commander” by this name.
ANSWER: Keane or Commander Keen
8. In John Corigliano's The Mannheim Rocket, it is followed by the blowing of a loud whistle. Kevin Love wrote a series of progressive variations for guitar on it, and an atonal version can be found in movement XVIII of Olivier Messaien's Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus. Originally written by Francois Bouin, this song is the basis of a set of dissonant variations by Erno Dohnanyi, his opus 25, and a better-known set of variations that comprise Mozart's k300e. Also featured in the beginning of movement 2 of Haydn's "Surprise Symphony," this is, FTP, what nursery song, which expresses curiosity about a celestial object?
ANSWER: "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" (accept "Ah ! vous dirai-je, Maman" before "expresses curiosity…")
9. In act one, scene two of this work, the eldest character reads a letter telling him that his ex-wife Cleotha has died. The central female character still mourns for her dead husband Crawley, who was killed while helping two of the characters steal some firewood. Avery, who is trying to start the Good Shepherd Church, wants to marry her, but she gives in to a little kiss with Lymon. Boy Charles, the brother of Wining Boy and Doaker, became a Ghost of the Yellow Dog after stealing the object at the center of the action from Sutter, whose ghost appears to several characters. Centering on Boy Willie trying to convince Berniece to sell the object so that he can buy Sutter’s land, FTP name this play about the struggle represented by a musical instrument, written by August Wilson.
ANSWER: The Piano Lesson
10. One of the principal inhibitors of this process is 2-carboxy-arabinitol-1-phosphate. The presence of magnesium stimulates it, in part due to that ion’s actions on FBPase and SBPase, which are two of the critical enzymes in its recovery phase. In the first step of this process, the rate-limiting part is the conversion of one reactant into an enediolate prior to its nucleophilic attack on the other input’s lone carbon, which then leads to the formation of two molecules of 3-phosphoglycerate. Some of the 3PG molecules are converted to glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate, which can become a source of glucose, while others regenerate ribulose bisphosphate. FTP name this process that begins with the actions of the enzyme rubisco, used by plants to fix carbon dioxide into sugars.
ANSWER: Calvin-Benson Cycle [prompt on Dark Reactions or Carbon Reactions]
11. He expressed his scientific instrumentalism with a tract on mechanics in De Motu. He defended Christianity against the anti-Anglican “free-thinkers” in Alciphron, and he later extolled the virtues of tar water before moving on to contemplate God in Siris. In his first major work, he explored ideas such as minimum visibles and tangibles as they related to perception. After A New Essay Towards a Theory of Vision, his next two works laid out his views against abstraction, particularly that of Locke, and against materialism, holding that “to be is to be perceived.” Author of Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonus and A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, FTP name this Irish bishop and philosopher whose writings inspired the naming of the hometown of the University of California’s flagship campus.
ANSWER: George Berkeley
12. When reacted with a nitrile, they produce an imine anion that can be hydrolyzed into a ketone, and they can cause nucleophilic ring opening of epoxides. Pouring a solution of them over dry ice followed by protonation results in carboxylic acids, which will not form addition products with these. One of their most common uses is reacting with aldehydes and ketones to form secondary and tertiary alcohols, respectively. Because they essentially act as carbanions, they can be protonated by weak acids to yield alkanes. FTP name these organometallic reagents that are formed by reacting an alkyl halide with magnesium, named for their French discoverer.
ANSWER: Grignard reagents
13. This author wrote about the orchestra director Gabriel Atlan-Ferrera’s love for the titular soprano in Inez. He explored the history of his native country in two early works: one following Franz, Isabella, Javier, and Elizabeth as they drive to Cholula in a VW bug; and another featuring the god-like Ixca Cienfuegos as he interacts with the upper class after his country’s revolution. After A Change of Skin and Where the Air is Clear, he expanded into Spanish history, specifically the building of the Escorial, in Terra Nostra. He is best known, though, for a novel written in all three voices about the last moments of a corrupt, wealthy politician who betrayed his way through the Mexican Revolution. FTP name this author of The Death of Artemio Cruz.
ANSWER: Carlos Fuentes
14. Outside of the official proceedings of this meeting, two of the delegates, John Lydius and Conrad Weiser, both bought land in the Wyoming Valley, eventually leading to the Pennamite Wars. James DeLancey served as host, and Hendrick served as the spokesman for the group that the British Board of Trade hoped to gain as an ally against France: the Iroquois League. It also put forth a namesake plan whereby a President-General and Grand Council would create a more centralized government of the colonies. The plan, as written by Thomas Hutchinson and Benjamin Franklin, was never put in effect but did influence the Articles of Confederation. FTP name this 1754 meeting held in the namesake city in New York.
ANSWER: Albany Congress
15. The ‘leakage’ variety of this parameter is often utilized in gas discharge lamps to help prevent damage. When two elements with this property are placed next to each other, the dot convention is often used to keep track of polarity, and the coefficient of coupling is used to determine the magnitude of the ‘mutual’ variety based on the magnitudes of the ‘self’ variety of this parameter. It is defined as voltage drop divided by the derivative of current with respect to time, or more commonly as magnetic flux divided by current flow. FTP name this parameter that describes coiled circuit elements that oppose changes in current, symbolized L and measured in Henrys.
ANSWER: inductance
16. John Rutter wrote one of these compositions that opens with a setting of a Thomas Ken writing. Frederick Delius used passages from Also Sprach Zarathustra in his version of this form, and Leonard Bernstein, at the request of Jacqueline Kennedy, wrote a dramatized version that features many musical styles, including rock-n-roll and blues. Stravinsky wrote a “very cold” setting with only moderate instrumentation, apparently as a reaction against elaborate settings like Mozart’s “Coronation” version. J.S. Bach combined several earlier compositions into his seminal setting in B minor. FTP name this musical form found in Ordinary and Proper varieties, designed to be used in Catholic worship services.
ANSWER: Mass [accept Ordinary Mass b/c the works are all more or less Ordinaries]
17. He was the original leader of the Wild Hunt, which rode around killing people annually from October 31st to April 30th. In one story, he disguised himself as a farm hand named Bolverk to gain access to a mead made from honey and the blood of Kvasir, the wisest of the Vanir. In another story, he participated in a question answering contest with the wise giant Vafthrudnir to learn of his fate. More famously, he gained wisdom by piercing himself with his spear Gugnir and hanging from Yggdrasil for nine days, and sacrificing one eye for a drink from Mimir’s well. Also the possessor of the eight legged horse Sleipnir and the ravens Hugin and Munin, FTP name this deity destined to be eaten by Fenrir at Ragnarok, the chief god of the Norse pantheon.
ANSWER: Odin [or Wotan; or Wodan]
18. This man first distinguished himself as chief secretary to Ireland before being elected to Parliament from Oxford. While serving as home secretary to Arthur Wellesley, he helped carry out the concessionary Emancipation Act, allowing Catholics to sit in Parliament, though it cost him his own seat. Earlier, he had revamped Britain’s criminal code and established the London police force, now named for him. His first stint as prime minister lasted only about five months, but he came back six years later, in 1841, for a second term, during which he reinstituted the income tax and famously repealed the Corn Laws. FTP name this British prime minister who founded the Conservative Party.