Illinois Open 2007: Spite of the Long Knives
Playoffs 2
Illinois
Tossups
1. A minor character in this novel, Dr. Prance, typifies the “new woman,” but hates talking about it. One of the more notable episodes in this novel is the declaration of one of the main characters that “After years of dominating women, it is time for men to take their turn!”, a sentiment shared by many characters in the novel. One of the female characters’ fathers is a mesmerist. That character, Selah, consents to his daughter’s feminist campaigns as a way to make money. At a dinner hosted by Miss Birdseye at the beginning of the novel, many of the main characters meet. Another character, the cousin of the protagonist, writes unsuccessful social commentary and works for the protagonist’s sister. That character, Basil Ransom, later returns to the titular city to attempt to marry his cousin’s housemate. For ten points, identify this novel by Henry James, which centers on Olive Chancellor and Verena Tarrant.
ANSWER: The Bostonians
2. This god always gave the right answer to a question, and with every question he was asked, he grew more intelligent. He aided in the capturing of Loki by constructing the net that was used, and after his death at the hands of Fjalar and Galar, his remains ended up in Odhrorir, which changed hands after the murder of Gilling and was subsequently guarded by Gunnlod in the middle of a mountain. In order to obtain the mead made from this god, one deity worked for Baugi, who subsequently drilled a hole in the mountain, and after changing into a snake and being allowed three sips, Odin drank all of it, as those who drank it became wiser and inspired poetically. For ten points, identify this god made from the spittle of the Aesir and Vanir.
ANSWER: Kvasir
3. In one this artist’s lesser known works, a furry brown creature wanders around on one of the title objects, and in the foreground, a wagon wheel and axel sit without the wagon. In addition to The Icebergs, this artist also painted a landscape in which the sun is shining directly into the eyes of the viewer, illuminating the central river to reveal a flock of birds and a bunch of tropical trees. In one of his better known works, this artist portrays a sunset above a river, with trees to the right and purple mountains in the distant background, a skill he may have learned from his teacher, Thomas Cole. For ten points, identify this Hudson River School painter who liked to paint gigantic canvasses, and whose works include Twilight in the Wilderness and a famous representation of Niagara Falls.
ANSWER: Frederic Edwin Church
4. Originally, this region was an Egyptian tributary, but civil conflicts in Egypt caused their rule to collapse and by the 11th century BCE there was an independent kingdom here based around Napata. The kingdom by this name was founded by Alara and survived for a time before being reconquered by Egypt. After another interruption in Egyptian power, another kingdom of the same name was founded and later moved its capital to Meroë. This kingdom traded with the Greeks via the Red Sea but by the 2nd century CE they disappear from primary sources. For ten points, name this civilization south of Egypt which may or may not have been the same as a similarly named one mentioned several times in the Bible.
ANSWER: Kush (accept Nubia until “Napata”)
5. Klenow Fragments are produced when one of these from E. Coli is cleaved by subtilisin. They require a magnesium ion co-factor to function properly, and are generally highly conserved throughout all organisms. Ones coded for by the Fiji and Labelle plasmids are unique in that the amino acid sequence Asp-Thr-Asp, which forms the core of the third motif in family B of these proteins, is not present. In addition to family B these can be classified into 6 other families, though those in family D are found only in archea and are thought to be replicative. Retroviruses encode a unique RNA-dependent one called reverse transciptase, and the repair type is involved with the processing of Okazaki Fragments. FTP, name these enzymes that catalyze polymerization of deoxyribonucleotides along a DNA strand.
ANSWER: DNA polymerases (prompt on “polymerases”)
6. For a collection that attempted to gather the works of this poet’s homeland, he contributed “Notes on [his country’s] Song”, in the process attributing many folksongs. A poem by this writer on the subject of flowers notes that “my Luve’s like the melodie that’s sweetly played in tune.” In addition to the “Red, Red, Rose”, this man wrote a work in which he saw three hizzies coming up the road, a “gae scence”. Another, more famous, work by this poet is addressed to a Wee, sleeket, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,” and empathizes with the fear that’s in its breastie.One of this man’s best known works beings “When chapman billies leave the street, And drouthy neibors, neibors, meet”. That poem, a long mock epic, is entitled “Tam O’Shanter.” For ten points, identify this poet whose works were collected in Poems, Chiefly of the Scottish Dialect.
ANSWER: Robert Burns
7. His design has been based off of actors Mel Gibson, Michael Biehn, and in his most recent iteration, Lee Van Cleef. He co-founded the anti-proliferation organization “Philanthropy” after the events of Shadow Moses, with Dr. Emmerich. His name originates from the protagonist of Escape from New York, a favorite movie of his creator, Hideo Kojima. He is a former member of the special forces unit FOXHOUND, whose other members have included Meryl Silverburgh and Big Boss. Signature items possessed by him include rations, a bandana, a pack of cigarettes and most notably cardboard boxes. For 10 points, identify this character, who in 2008, is set to appear alongside Nintendo owned characters in Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii and in Metal Gear Solid 3 for the ps3.
ANSWER: Solid Snake
8. While in South America, he wrote two books, one an ethnobotanical study of trees along the Amazon, the other an account of his work entitled A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro. He expounded on his belief in evolution in an essay , which Darwin combined with his own for a paper published in the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society, entitled “On the Law Which Has Regulated the Introduction of New Species.” While doing research in the Malay Peninsula, he used the geographic distribution of animals as evidence and formulated an imaginary boundary separating the fauna of Asia and Australia. FTP, identify the zoogeographer who posited his most famous theory in Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection.
ANSWER: Alfred Russel Wallace
9. The Hilbert Basis Theorem guarantees that if one of these is Noetherian, then the polynomials over it are also Noetherian. While the existence of a multiplicative unit in one of these isn’t guaranteed by the axioms, most authors assume its presence. These can form quotients with special subsets known as ideals, and commutative ones with no zero divisors are known as integral domains. Formally an abelian group over addition and a monoid over multiplication, this describes, for ten points, what algebraic structure exemplified by the integers?
ANSWER: rings
10. It cited the testimony of Nadezhda Krupskaya, which had been suppressed since her death, and the Mingrelian Affair, concluded a year ago, was repudiated. A perceived weakening of Soviet authority stemming from this led to uprisings against Soviet control in Poland and Hungary in the 1950s. Although the policies which led to Yugoslavia's split from the rest of the Communist Bloc were condemned, it failed to bring it back into the Soviet fold. Mass deportations and purges were condemned, and many of the victims were returned home or rehabilitated and allowed to resume the lives they had led prior to being arrested. FTP, name this speech by Nikita Khrushchev, which cited Lenin's Political Testament as a condemnation of Stalin's cult of personality and which was not completely released until 1989.
ANSWER: On the Personality Cult and its Consequences (accept Khrushchev's Secret Speech, Khrushchev's Denunciation of Stalin or anything involving Khrushchev secretly denouncing Stalin)
11. In Donald Knuth’s book Selected Papers on Computer Languages, he references reading this work on his honeymoon, and with ultimately inspiring his work on language with respect to computer programming. In the introduction to this book, the author posits that “linguists must be concerned with the problem of determining the fundamental underlying properties of successful grammars” and that the central notion of linguistic theory is that of “linguistic level”. Famously, this work contains a sentence with perfect grammar, yet that is complete nonsense: “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” FTP, name this book that laid the foundation of transformational grammar, a work by Noam Chomsky.
ANSWER: Syntactic Structures
12. Because this person developed a quasistatic approximation for creeping flow, creeping flow is sometimes named for him. His namesake radius scales as one over the viscosity and gives the approximate hydraulic radius of a molecule in liquid. His namesake law of attenuation says that kinematic viscosity frequency squared over sound speed cubed gives the length scale at which sound is attenuated in a Newtonian fluid. His namesake law gives the drag on a sphere in creeping flow and he is the name of the cgs unit of kinematic viscosity, but a still more fundamental entity in fluid dynamics is also named for him. For ten points, name this eminent scientist and mathematician for whom are named the equations of momentum conservation for a Newtonian fluid, along with Navier.
ANSWER: George Gabriel Stokes
13. Simone Molinaro, Vincenzo Galilei provided much of the source material for one of this artist’s works, the suites of transcriptions from lute called Ancient Airs and Dances. His appreciation for Rossini led him to write the arrangements La Boutique fantastique and Rossiniana, which were later made into ballets, while his love of Botticelli was expressed in the Three Botticelli Pictures of 1927. His wife was an excellent composer in her own right, finishing his Lucrezia after he died. However, his best knows works include one memorializing L’Ottobrata; another that begins at the Valle Julia; and a third that is partly set on the Via Appia. For ten points name this composer best known for this trilogy of Roman Festivals, The Fountains of Rome, and The Pines of Rome.
ANSWER: Ottorino Respighi
14. The victors at this battle were unfamiliar with the rules of knightly etiquette, and as a result butchered everyone who was unable to flee the scene. Men from the canton of Schwyz made up the larger part of the defenders at the battle, and the reputation they earned as fighters that day led to the Swiss Confederation being named after them. Most of the Habsburg foot solders were able to escape as a body to the town of Zug; the knights had charged ahead, however, and found themselves trapped by rocks dropped by the defenders to block off the ends of the pass. Many were cut down where they stood by Swiss halberdiers, others were driven into Lake Egeri by Swiss defenders rolling rocks and logs into the pass. FTP, identify this decisive victory by the Swiss over the Habsburgs, which gave the Swiss the ability to renew their treaty of Confederation and earned them 60 years of peace with the Habsburgs.
ANSWER: Battle of Morgarten
15. A little-read second part of this work contains such sections as the sixteenth, on “The Need for Metaphysics”; for forty-forth, on “The Metaphysics of Sexual Love”; and the thirtieth, on “The Pure Subject of Knowing”, which holds that that pure subject is one of the titular concepts. This work opens by drawing a parallel between that same titular concept, the root of causality and unique object of experience, and the Ding an sich of Kant, which this book’s author claims is not only knowable, but is all that is known. More famous is the author’s claim in the second-half books that salvation can only come through subversion of the individual spirit, especially by the power of art, especially music; a doctrine known as the author’s Pessimism. For ten points, name this magnum opus of Arthur Schopenhauer.
ANSWER: The World as Will and Representation or Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (or The World as Will and Idea)
16. A line of dialogue in this play is strongly reminiscent of Mark 9:43-47, which instructs people to cut their hands off if they offend. One character in this work is unable to do more than recite famous speeches, and cannot accept new scientific innovations, specifically blood circulation. The title character’s daughter doesn’t want to marry Thomas Diaphorus, but is forced to by her father who wants to utilize his services. That character, Angelique, is Cleante’s nephew. Famously, the author of this play died acting in its final performance; this led to his inability to be buried in a Christian cemetery. For ten points, identify this work of Moliere, whose title character is the perpetually “sick” [mod: make sure sarcasm is implied] Argan.
ANSWER: The Hypochondriac (accept The Imaginary Invalid)
17. This reaction has an acid-catalyzed analogue that is essentially a reverse Fischer reaction. The mechanism of its normal form was discovered using oxygen-18 tracers and optically active chiral alcohols; the final step of that mechanism is a rapid acid-base reaction in which the alkoxyde leaving group from the previous step deprotinates the left complex. This reaction proceeds through the formation of a tetrahedral intermediate, which dissociates when an acyl-oxygen bond is cleaved; it is thus generically an endothermic nucleophilic acyl substitution that causes esters to hydrolyze to carboxylic acid salts, the namesake products. As those esters are often triglycerides, its namesake value is a measure of fatty acid chain mass. For ten points, name this reaction that generally produces caustic surfactants like soaps.
ANSWER: saponification (accept nucleophilic acyl substitution before it’s mentioned and prompt on it afterwards; prompt on parts of “nucleophilic acyl substitution”)
18. In one short story by this author, a wheelchair-ridden old man criticizes white-collar workers, while his wife is captivated by a hare-lipped man who drives by in a Holden. A character in one of his dramas “would like to devour the world, and keep it warm inside”, while the action of one of his novels is divided between two twin brothers, one of whom kicked the other out of the library while reading The Brothers Karamazov. One of his dramas focuses on three homes on Mildred Street in the fictional suburb of Sarsaparilla, and he recounted much of his life in Flaws in the Glass: A Self-Portrait. For ten points, identify the Australian winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature and author of The Ham Funeral, Tree of Man, and Voss.
ANSWER: Patrick White
19. His early life was dominated by a family feud that saw one branch of his family support the Imagawa Clan and the other the Oda Clan. This struggle directly effected him when his father, after being told that this man, his son, would be killed unless he dropped his support of the Imagawa, simply pointed out it would show his loyalty to that clan if he was willing to sacrifice his son. Obviously, this man was not killed and went on to become the leader of the Matsudaira clan. He became important in national politics, and in 1584 supported Hideyoshi's attempt at national hegemony, and in the process exchanged his family's lands for lands in the Kanto region. This trade obviously paid off, as at the time of Hideyoshi's death, this man was the most powerful of his vassals. For ten points, name this man whose forces were victorious at the Battle of Sekigahara and then went on to rule as the first Shogun of the Edo Period.
ANSWER: Tokugawa Ieyasu
20. This work appears to contain part of a black-and-white sign that said “Danger” or “Police,” but this is uncertain. The middle of one side has a faded four-pane comic strip; one easily missed feature in this work is a black-painted tennis ball. The artist claims that his name for the genre that this work inaugurated was made up by analogy to Caulder’s “mobile” and “it’s now in the dictionary.” Currently housed in the Moderna, Stockholm, this collage is over twenty-five square feet. Its most noticeable feature has a face matted with various primary colors; has been painted green, perhaps to resemble a grass skirt; and is surrounded by a white-walled tire. For ten points, name this stuffed Angora ram-featuring combine, the best-known work or Robert Rauschenberg.
ANSWER: Monogram