Commodore Classic I – Ode to the Confederate Memorial Hall
March 25, 2006
Round 12
Tossups by Dan Passner with Ray Luo, Chris Romero, Matt Weiner, and Matt Keller
1. One character’s mistress received gonorrhea from her husband forcing her to have a hysterectomy. That husband has become a driven man who often gives those under his charge what is referred to as “the treatment,” until they give in to him. The protagonist resisted “the treatment,” even though it meant he would be giving up a promotion to colonel and first bugle. It is after going from Warden to “Dynamite” Holmes, who blinded a man in the ring, that the protagonist starts sleeping with a prostitute named Lorene. Eventually, the protagonist goes AWOL after killing the guard that killed his friend. FTP, name this tale about the military service and death of Robert Hewitt, set around the bombing of Pearl Harbor and written by James Jones.
ANSWER: From Here to Eternity
2. This goddess wound up with her husband since her other suitor had already claimed the moon. She once cut off one of her breasts when she came up short of the usual thousand flowers she offered to a shrine each day, and she is usually worshipped in the home on Fridays. At various times, she was associated with the dwarf Vamana and the ax-wielding Parasurama, and she is often depicted sitting on a lotus, looking benevolent. The mother of Kama, her most famous incarnation was kidnapped by Ravana and eventually rescued by her husband's avatar, Rama. FTP name this Hindu goddess of wealth who is worshipped on the primary day of Diwali, the husband of Vishnu.
ANSWER: Lakshmi or Sri
3. His government had its seat at Flensburg, where he surrendered four years after developing the “wolf pack attack” strategy. His rise began in earnest in January 1943, when he replaced Erich Raeder, although he had earlier attracted notice by commanding the secret project to rebuild the U-boats. The title of his memoirs, “Ten Years and Twenty Days” refers, respectively, to the length of time he spent in prison and the length of time he spent as leader of Germany. FTP, name this admiral who was named as the new president by Hitler just before the latter’s suicide, and just as Germany was losing World War II.
ANSWER: Karl Doenitz
4. One poem in it begins, “perfection is terrible, it cannot have children,” and the title figures make the ultimate sacrifice, to serve “month after month, to no purpose,” and they “lean” in the titular location between Paris and Rome. That poem’s title, “The Munich Mannequins,” would allude to imagery shown in this work’s most famous poem, while other poems in the collection take their titles from canonical sources, like “Lorelai,” “Lady Lazarus” and “Lesbos.” FTP, name this poetry collection whose title work is about “Stasis in darkness” and “God’s Lioness,” and contains a poem that asserts “Every woman adores a fascist,” “Daddy,” by Sylvia Plath.
ANSWER: “Ariel”
5. One work on this theme is a marble relief featuring angels with interwoven wings and is part of the Rambona diptych. One painted on poplar shows the figure in this scenario surrounded by flora and flanked by John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, while the same artist tackled the theme again, this time with an ornate red canopy and six saints to her sides, a work for the Barnabas altarpiece. In addition to those two works by Botticelli and Cellini’s six saint theme, there is one in which 29 angels, saints, the magi, and the pope kneel before a figure in a large blue robe, and one in a small cloth. FTP, name this theme which Cimabue and Giotto also worked in, that was often the center panel of an altarpiece, in which a key New Testament figure relaxes with her child.
ANSWER: Madonna Enthroned with Child or with Christ [or Maesta]
6. Its GABAergic bistratified and basket interneurons mediate non-synapse specific iLTD. It receives input from the cortex via the perforant pathway, which excites granule cells of the dentate gyrus, which in turn project to its CA3 region via mossy fibers. Its Schaffer collaterals connect CA3 and CA1 regions, where presynaptic tetanus, along with postsynaptic depolarization, cause NMDA receptor-mediated long term potentiation. Its lesion in the famous patient H. M. caused the failure to encode episodic memory. FTP name this seahorse-shaped brain structure involved in learning.
ANSWER: hippocampus
7. When implemented, this plan settled on a twenty-five-dollar a month figure, but its proposals to raise funds by taxing banks and investing government dollars in currency speculation were declared unconstitutional. Alfred Orage’s periodical The New Age became a hotbed of this movement, and William Aberhart founded the party named for it which controlled Alberta for four decades. Explained in the book Economic Democracy by Clifford Douglas, this system believed in severing the relationship between utilization of production capacity and price. FTP, name this movement which advocated freely issuing subsidies to both producers and consumers.
ANSWER: social credit
8. Rabbi Tarfon related the aggadic opinion that one of these who sentenced a man to death every seventy years was considered bloodthirsty. They met in the Lishkat La-Gazit, and in its second re-incarnation it often had to deal with false prophets. Following its dissolution its role in the Jewish commuity was filled by the 120-member Anshei Knesset Ha-Gadolah, which maintained its concept of the “Nasi,” or Prince. FTP, name this 71 person court dissolved in 70 CE that met several times a year, notable in the New Testament for condemning Stephen to death.
ANSWER: Great Sanhedrin
9. One character’s first significant aria is a miniature da capo built over a three-bar ground bass in which the character notes “Peace and I are strangers grown.” The act ends with a dance and the exclamation “to the hills and the vales.” A chorus later entertains with “Thanks to these lonesome vales,” and cupids appear to scatter roses at the end along to the chorus “With Drooping wings.” It has a libretto based on the librettist’s earlier “Brutus of Alba” and features “When I am laid in earth.” FTP, name this composition, an answer to John Blow’s Venus and Adonis, which centers on two lovers, one the Queen of Carthage, written by Henry Purcell.
ANSWER: Dido and Aeneas
10.Like batter strikeouts and caught stealings, it was not kept during the first decade of the 20th century, and records of the statistic from the missing years were reconstructed from the records of a steamshipman by ICI and Elias Sports, leading to the Hall of Fame induction of Sam Thompson. More famously, it took over a decade for Major League Baseball to recognize the SABR statistical research that awarded an extra one to the single season record holder, Hack Wilson. FTP, name this statistic previously dominated by Hank Greenberg and Lou Gehrig, and more recently by Albert Belle and five Rockies, a Triple crown stat that isn’t batting average or home runs.
ANSWER: Runs Batted In
11. It has been used to analyze Rutherford backscattering and dipole-dipole interactions in a 2D system of spheres, the latter using Tsallis threshold acceptance probability. Based on the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm, it explores arbitrary potential functions probabilistically, and takes nonminimizing steps in order to find the global minimum. Introduced by Kirkpatrick and Cerny, it begins at high temperature, moves along the canonical distribution with transition probabilities of e to the negative 1 over T, and decreases the temperature over time. FTP name this heuristic Monte Carlo method of statistical physics inspired by analogy with slow cooling in metallurgy.
ANSWER: simulated annealing
12. The decision rested on the fact that the plaintiffs could not later sue to recover damages incurred as a result of the action under dispute, and thus could appeal directly to the Supreme Court even before harm occurred. It noted that the power sought was a “lawmaking” one, not enumerated by Article II, and that debates over the Taft-Hartley Act had specifically excluded the option being exercised. The executive order in question authorized the respondent, Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer, to take over several steel mills in 1952. FTP, name this decision which sided with several Ohio steel concerns against President Truman’s attempt to avoid a work stoppage.
ANSWER: Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer
13. A representative treatise of this period is “On Isis and Osiris” by Plutarch of Chaeronea, which displays its trademark religious syncretism much like that of another member, Numenius of Apamea. The interpreter of the Old Testament in a Greek light, Philo of Alexandria, was one member of this school, whose members spent time pondering the relationship between the One, the Dyad, and the Timaeus story, and on other so-called “Unwritten Doctrines” related to Pythagoras. Pioneered by Antiochus of Ascalon, it ended when Plotinus founded a newer school. FTP, name this period of Platonic thought which came between the Academy itself and Neoplatonism.
ANSWER: Middle Platonism
14. One agreement by this name was signed between Brandenburg and France to end the Third Dutch War, while another was concluded in 1570 and achieved a short truce in the Wars of Religion. The more recent one transferred Bukovina to Romania and Trieste, Friuli, and Istria to Italy and forced a new republic to recognize the independence of Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia. One article said that no signatory could in any way compromise its own independence, which was invoked 19 years later to declare the illegality of the Anschluss. FTP, name this 1919 treaty which ratified the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, creating the independent Republic of Austria.
ANSWER: Treaty of St. Germain
15. This enzyme is inactive in most animal cells. In the human body, it is active in stem cells, germ lines, and many cancer cells, allowing them an unlimited number of cell divisions. It is unique because it is composed of both RNA and protein, allowing it to code for complementary DNA nucleotides. A form of DNA polymerase, it catalyzes the formation of repeating DNA sequences on chromosomes, replacing those normally lost during DNA replication. FTP, name this enzyme responsible for telomeres.
ANSWER: telomerase
16. One character does not wake from a coma for several weeks, as opposed to the other children with him in the woods, who awoke from their comas quickly. Another character is the son of a famous artist, who dreams of being murdered by his son. After waking from the coma, the aforementioned character is unable to read but he otherwise gets along well with his family. Two characters are inexplicably linked, though one is an old man and the other is just fifteen, an age he decides is “ideal for running away from home.” Ending with the title character heading for Shikoku, this novel focuses on Nakata and Tamura. FTP, name this most recent effort of Murakami Haruki, whose title incorporates the name of the author of “The Metamorphosis.”
ANSWER: Kafka on the Shore
17. Because the net difference in height between its headwaters and the mouth is only 30 feet, even though it stretches over 300 miles, this is one of the world's slowest moving rivers. It arises near Melbourne and is navigable from Sanford to its mouth, though it becomes a broad estuary north of Palatka. One of the few rivers that flows from south to north, it forms Lake George near Ocala National Forest and is home to alligators, stingrays, manatees, dolphins, and fresh and saltwater fish. FTP, identify this Floridian river that empties into the Atlantic by Jacksonville.
Answer: St. Johns River
18. Members of their “black” division wear cyanide capsule necklaces to avoid capture. Their deeds include killing 100 people by suicide-bombing the central bank and assassinating president Ranasinghe Premadasa. They also occupied the Jaffna Peninsula for several years after they were founded by Vellupillai Prabhakaran. Responsible for the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, their formal name refers to their stated goal of forming an independent state called Eelam. FTP, name this terrorist organization formed around an ethnic group in Sri Lanka.
ANSWER: Tamil Tigers [or Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam]
19. For a given species in a real solution, the derivative of chemical potential can be set equal to the universal gas constant times temperature times the derivative of the natural log of this quantity. A simpler way of expressing it is the exponential of the difference between the chemical potential in a given state and that of the pure substance, and at a constant temperature and pressure, this quantity must be equal among different phases in equilibrium. In a gas-phase reaction, it becomes equivalent to activity, and for a pure gas, its value is one. FTP, name this correction for the non-ideality of gases, measured in the same units as pressure and often defined as the tendency of a substance to escape its current phase.
Answer: fugacity
20. The title figure has her right hand lightly upon her breast, while three of the five faces to the right are directed towards the viewer, one with a look of sadness, one of vapidity, and one of mischief. The title figure’s right heel rests upon two ornate pillows, one red and one a dark blue. The lush pink drapery that dominates the background is illustrative of its era, and Phallic imagery abounds on the edge in the background as a draped servant unwraps a scroll while standing next to an inexplicable and totally disproportionate white column. FTP, name this work showing a baby Jesus pale and almost lifeless with distended, bloated torso and elongated fingers, painted by Parmagianino and named for an odd bodily feature.