NASAT 2017 - Round 20 - Tossups
1. This book proposes that Socrates dies at the moment of the death verdict and considers his response to the verdict as his last words. This book analogizes the demonic to the divine in a consideration of concealment and disclosure viewed from different spheres of existence illustrated with the story of a girl seduced by a mythical creature. This book describes a man who constantly makes two spiritual movements, the second of which recovers finitude "by virtue of the absurd." Published under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio, this book contrasts the "knight of faith" with the "knight of infinite resignation" in its treatment of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. For 10 points, name this book by Søren Kierkegaard.
ANSWER: Fear and Trembling [or Frygt og Bæven] <Casalaspi>
2. Sutton's work with grasshoppers and Boveri's studies on these organisms led to the chromosome theory of inheritance. Shuffling nuclear distribution in embryos of this animal revealed a more probabilistic nature to blastomere differentiation in a study by Hans Driesch, who also used this animal to make the first-ever clone. An Arbacia species of these animals produces the chemoattractant resact, and they ensure species-specific recognition using bindin. The acrosomal reaction begins on contact with the jelly coat layer first discovered on the eggs of these animals, whose use as a model organism for observing gamete fusion was popularized by Oskar Hertwig. For 10 points, name these spiny echinoderms used to study fertilization.
ANSWER: sea urchins [prompt on echinoderms and echinodermata] <Smart>
3. An idiotic theory about this dynasty claims that it is related to Jesus's bloodline because the Christian fish symbol has a connection to this dynasty's semi-legendary namesake. The final ruler of this dynasty was overthrown with the approval of Pope Zachary and had his hair cut, supposedly depriving him of his magical or royal powers. An early king of it won the Battle of Tolbiac and then was baptized by Saint Remigius. Under the reign of its many "do-nothing" kings, the mayors of the palace actually wielded the most power, including the victor at the Battle of Tours. This dynasty was founded by Childeric I, had power consolidated under Clovis, and was ultimately supplanted by a line started by Pepin the Short. For 10 points, what Frankish dynasty was succeeded by the Carolingians?
ANSWER: Merovingian [prompt on Salic; prompt on Franks] <Cheyne>
4. An artist's technique of giving depth to these objects by surrounding them with blue outlines was described in a Maurice Merleau-Ponty essay about that artist's "Doubt." These objects appear in a painting admired by members of Les Nabis (lay nah-BEE) in a Maurice Denis Homage to its artist. Coins were used as wedges to prop up these objects by an artist who worked in Aix-en-Provence (ex on pro-VAWNS). The painting Rideau, Cruchon et Compotier, which was sold for sixty million dollars in 1999, depicts many of these objects. An artist who also painted groups of skulls and oranges declared that he wanted to "astonish Paris with" one of these objects. For 10 points, name these fruits found in 270 still-lifes by Paul Cézanne.
ANSWER: apples <Bentley>
5. Description acceptable. It is unclear whether references to residents of this place being "prominent of breast" means that those residents are of the same age as others, literally have large breasts, or if a word meaning "splendid" was misconstrued. Its border is marked by a tree called the sidrat al-muntahaa. A visit called the mi'raaj to this place is notably described in the Surat al-Najm. "Charity" and "Forgiveness and Suppressing Anger" are names of two of its eight "gates." After he is carried to "the farthest mosque" by the mule Buraq at the end of the Night Journey, Muhammad receives a tour of this place guided by Jibreel. For 10 points, name this opposite of Jahannam that some sources claim will grant "72 virgins" to those that enter.
ANSWER: al-jannah [or al-Firdaws; or Daar al-Aakhirah; or the Daar al-Salaam; or Islamic Heaven; or Islamic Paradise; prompt on Islamic afterlife; prompt on answers involving a garden; do not accept or prompt on answers about the "Garden of Eden"; do not accept or prompt on "al-Jahannam"] <Golfinos>
6. This author mourned "Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave / Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind" in a poem that ends "I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned." This author of "Dirge Without Music" argued that heroes "seek release / from dusty bondage into luminous air" in a poem that celebrates the "holy, terrible day" in which the title character first saw a "vision" of "light anatomized." As a 19-year-old student, this poet became famous for writing a poem that begins "All I could see from where I stood / Was three long mountains and a wood." Her poems include "Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare" and "Renascence." For 10 points, name this author whose poem "First Fig" claims "My candle burns at both ends / It will not last the night."
ANSWER: Edna St. Vincent Millay <Thompson>
7. A conjecture of Erdős (AIR-dish) states that there are only three Brown numbers, which are numbers with this property that are one more than a factorial number. The Möbius function of an integer is zero if that integer has a non-trivial factor with this property. All prime numbers of the form 4k-plus-one can be expressed as the sum of two numbers with this property, and according to a theorem of Lagrange, every natural number can be expressed as the sum of four of these numbers. The sum of two consecutive triangular numbers has this property. Integers with this property have an odd number of factors, and their prime factorizations have only even exponents. For 10 points, name these numbers equal to an integer times itself.
ANSWER: perfect squares [or square numbers] <Thompson>
8. The perception that the US was controlling this country's defense industries led to the Westland affair. One of its representatives called Kendall Myers a "little rat" after the latter denounced the "one sided" relationship between the US and this country. In a widely mocked 2006 conversation, an American thanked a politician from this country for giving him a sweater. It became furious at the White House's hosting of Gerry Adams in 1995. The US President was mocked for saying "yo" to this country's leader. Shortly after the September 11 attacks, George W. Bush insisted that the US had "no truer friend" than this country. For 10 points, a so-called "Special Relationship" exists between the US and what European country led by people such as Margaret Thatcher?
ANSWER: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland [or UK; or Great Britain; or England; or Wales; or Scotland; or Northern Ireland; do not accept or prompt on "Ireland"] <Cheyne>
9. In ellipsometry, a key parameter is defined as the ratio of the amplitudes of two different forms of this property. Depending on the extent of this property, either Mueller or Jones calculus can be used to determine how this property transforms. This property can be described by set of four parameters denoted I, Q, U, and V; those are the Stokes vectors. The effect of optical elements that alter this property on intensity is described by Malus's (mah-LOOSE's) law. The vector representing this property rotates proportional to the Verdet constant in the Faraday effect. Light with one form of this property is completely transmitted at Brewster's angle. This property can be elliptical, circular, or linear. For 10 points, identify this property of a wave that describes the direction in which the electric field oscillates.
ANSWER: polarization [accept word forms; accept specific types until they are read] <Rombro>
10. The first floor of a building of this complex includes the five-part polyptych Yet I Do Marvel by Color Field artist Sam Gilliam, and Richard Hunt's bronze sculpture Swing Low. The three-tiered façade of a building in this complex derives from a wooden Yoruba (YO-roo-bah) figure that its Tanzanian-born architect came across. Part of this complex was built around a Pullman Sleeping Car and a guard tower from Angola. David Adjaye (AD-jay) designed a recently opened building in this complex that contains George Clinton's Mothership and a hymnal owned by Harriet Tubman. For 10 points, the National Museum of African American History and Culture is part of what group of museums on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.?
ANSWER: Smithsonian Institution [accept National Museum of African American History and Culture or SNMAAHC until it is read] <Bentley>
11. In a series of lectures, this author argued that "the king died and then the queen died" is a story, while "the king died and then the queen died of grief" is a plot. He distinguished between "flat" and "round" characters in those lectures, which were published in 1927 as Aspects of the Novel. This author wrote a novel whose epigraph exhorts the reader "Only connect." Charles Wilcox kills Leonard Bast in that novel by this author, which ends with Helen and Margaret Schlegel moving to the title estate. In another of his novels, Cyril Fielding misses a train to the Marabar Caves, resulting in Adela Quested accusing Dr. Aziz of molesting her. For 10 points, name this English author of Howard's End and A Passage to India.
ANSWER: E.M. Forster [or Edward Morgan Forster] <Droge>
12. A meta-analysis of experiments concerning this concept were compiled in a 2014 book by Dale Belman and Paul Wolfson. In economics, the most widely-known instance of the difference-in-differences method was used in a study of this concept. A natural experiment by Alan Krueger and David Card studied this concept and measured employment levels at two different points in time in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In economics textbooks, this concept is represented as a price floor in the labor market. Contemporary economists are mixed as to whether losses in employment would be created by setting this concept at fifteen dollars per hour. For 10 points, name this least permissible amount of compensation for work.
ANSWER: minimum wage [prompt on wage] <Droge>
13. Allylic examples of these compounds can react with strong bases to generate a carbanion that undergoes a [2,3]-sigmatropic rearrangement. One method of protecting alcohols is by reacting them with DHP, a compound with this functional group attached to a carbon–carbon double bond. These compounds can be formed by performing the oxymercuration reduction of an alkene in an alcohol solvent instead of water. They can also be made by reacting primary alkyl halides with unhindered alkoxide salts. Reactions involving organometallic reagents are often conducted in solvents containing this functional group, like dioxane or tetrahydrofuran. For 10 points, name this oxygen-containing functional group formed by that aforementioned Williamson synthesis.
ANSWER: ethers <Pendyala>
14. The McGuffey Readers used many passages from this author to teach elocution to American students. In Democracy in America, de Tocqueville observed that every pioneer's hut he encountered had a copy of the Bible and at least one work by this author. The Astor Place Riot was sparked by the rivalry between William Charles Macready and Edwin Forrest over their interpretations of one of this author's characters. Edwin Booth's best-known role was playing one of this author's title characters. Actors like Edmund Kean became celebrities by touring America performing this author's plays. For 10 points, name this playwright who was wildly popular in the 19th-century United States, where companies frequently performed his plays Julius Caesar and Macbeth.
ANSWER: William Shakespeare <Magin>
15. An author from this country wrote a novel in which the Solum brothers teach in Spring Creek; in that work, a locust invasion affects the family of the protagonist, whose wife often refers to the title underground creatures. In a novel from this country, the protagonist poses as a journalist who's lost his keys in order to spend the night in jail to avoid homelessness. This country is home to the author of a novel about immigrants in the Dakota Territory, Giants in the Earth, as well as the author of the recent novel series My Struggle. A novel from this country focuses on the farmers Axel and Isak as they come to terms with modernity, and was written by the author of Hunger. For 10 points, name this home country of Karl Knausgaard and Knut Hamsun.
ANSWER: Kingdom of Norway <Mehr>
16. One child dedicated to this deity was tied to a spear and thrown across a river by King Metabus. Aside from the context of The Aeneid, James Frazier took the title The Golden Bough from the ritual selecting this deity's chief priest, the "Rex Nemorensis," who duels his predecessor to death. This deity foiled Alpheus's pursuit of the nymph Arethusa by turning her into a spring, and also turned Egeria, with whom this goddess formed a triad along with Virbius, into a spring after the death of Numa Pompilius. Jupiter took the form of this goddess to seduce a nymph that this goddess turned into a bear, Callisto. For 10 points, name this daughter of Latona, and killer of Niobe's daughters, a huntress and moon goddess the Greeks called Artemis.
ANSWER: Diana [or Artemis until read] <Golfinos>
17. This man's son held a Christmas Day feast at Saalfeld where he began to consolidate a rebellion against his father. He married his second wife after she asked him for protection against Berengar of Ivrea. While this ruler reconciled with both of them, he faced a rebellion from his son Liudolf and an ally who died fighting the harka Bulcsu (BOOL-choo) and who was named Conrad the Red. This second husband of Adelaide is the namesake of a dynasty that ended with the death of Henry II and the ascension of the Salian dynasty. Pope John XII declared this ruler the secular protector of the church, several years after this man defeated the Magyars at the Battle of Lechfeld. For 10 points, name this eldest son of Henry the Fowler, who was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 962.
ANSWER: Otto the Great [or Otto I; prompt on Otto] <Cheyne>