WIT XIV 2006: Scientific Progress Goes "Boink"
Packet by Stanford A (Kevin Koai, Arnav Moudgil, Brian Lindquist, Kristiaan DeGreve)
Tossups
1. The cadenza from the finale of his first piano concerto contains humorous quotations of Beethoven’s “Rage Over a Lost Penny,” and that work also features a prominent solo trumpet part that demonstrates the influence of jazz and military band music. Like J. S. Bach, he wrote a set of 24 Preludes and Fugues, one in every key. His fifth symphony was famously labeled by the press as a “reply to just criticism,” and his opus 110a Chamber Symphony is an orchestration by Rudolf Barshai of his eighth string quartet. For ten points, identify this composer of the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District and a famous seventh symphony written during the siege of Leningrad.
ANSWER: Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich
2. His anti-corruption reputation was made early when he asked senior officials to raise their hands and then confiscated all black-market watches he saw on them. During the late ’80s, he was instrumental (although he did not coin the name) in developing the “Sinatra Doctrine” of letting Warsaw Pact nations “go their own way.” Known as the “White Fox” for his political skills, in 1972 he replaced Vasily Mzhavanadze after a corruption scandal as the First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party, but he rose to national prominence when Gorbachev appointed him Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1985. For ten points, who was this man who served as president of Georgia from 1992 to 2003?
ANSWER: Eduard Shevardnadze
3. Minor characters include news anchor Randy Pinkwood, “Song of the Sorcelator” author L.H. Franzibald, and Galahad, the recently-dumped ex-boyfriend of Annarchy. More memorable are Mac evangelist Charles, Vietnam-vet-turned-store-manager Frank, the whimsical cat-and-imp duo Twisp and Catsby, a drunken DIVX player, the Fruit Fucker 2000, and Kara and Brenna, the long-suffering wives of the creators.The creators have butted heads with American Greetings and Jack Thompson, but they have also created the charity Child’s Play, and an annual videogame convention, PAX. For ten points, name this popular webcomic created by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins that stars their alter egos, Gabe and Tycho.
ANSWER: Penny Arcade
4. Minor characters in this novel include Hegglund and Ratterer, both of whom work with the protagonist at the Hotel Green-Davidson. While living with his family in Kansas City, the protagonist romances the materialistic Hortense Briggs, but he is forced to run away to Chicago after a car accident that kills a little girl. In Lycurgus, New York, the protagonist’s uncle gives him a job at a collar factory, where he falls in love with Roberta Alden. He then begins to pursue the rich Sondra Finchley, only to discover that Roberta is pregnant. For ten points, name this novel about the ambitious Clyde Griffiths, written by Theodore Dreiser.
ANSWER: An American Tragedy
5. Construction on this structure began on February 6, 1973, with 62,000 tons of dirt having to be removed for its foundation. After completion, it was found to deviate only 1.1 inches from the vertical, and more than five months were shaved off of its planned construction time by the purchase of a Sikorsky Skycrane helicopter to transport its antenna. It has two main visitor centers: one at 1,100 feet, featuring a glass floor capable of holding 14 hippopotami, and the SkyPod at 1,465 feet. On a clear night, one can see the mist of Niagara Falls and the outline of Rochester, NY across Lake Ontario from it. For ten points, name this Toronto landmark, the tallest freestanding structure on land in the world.
ANSWER: CN Tower
6. The addition of alcohols to this functional group results in hemiacetals in a process similar to that of their hydration, which results in geminal diols. Two of them can be created in a process whose final step is typically reduction by dimethyl sulfide or zinc in acetic acid and whose first step is the reaction of a carbon-carbon double bond with ozone. A hydride reduction of this group results in a hydroxyl group. For ten points, name this functional group present in both ketones and aldehydes, a carbon atom double-bonded with an oxygen atom.
ANSWER: carbonyl
7. He wrote some poetry under the pen-name “Muhibbi”, including the line “everyone aims at the same meaning, but many are the versions of the story.” Dying of a stroke during the Battle of Szigetvár in 1566, he broke with 300 years of tradition to marry Roxelana, who he had captured in a campaign against Poland and Lithuania. He rebuilt the walls that at present still surround the old city of Jerusalem, and lamented on seeing the body of the 20-year-old Louis II, who he killed at one of his greatest victories, Mohács. For ten points, name this man, who laid siege to Vienna in 1529 and 1532, son of Selim I and sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1520 to 1566.
ANSWER: Suleiman I or Suleiman the Magnificent
8. In the recitative directly preceding the Act III sextet, we learn that the title character’s birth name was Rafaello. That sextet, “Riconosci in quest’amplesso,” which features the only appearance of the judge Don Curzio, also involves the entrance of one of the female leads with enough money to pay the title character’s debts and save him from a forced marriage with Marcellina, only to find out that Marcellina is his mother. Notable arias include “La vendetta, oh la vendetta!” and “Voi che sapete,” sung by Bartolo and Cherubino, respectively. All is resolved when the Countess Almaviva disguises herself as Susanna, in, for ten points, what Mozart opera based on a play by Beaumarchais?
ANSWER: The Marriage of Figaro or Le Nozze di Figaro
9. Aesop writes of Herakles attempting to smash an object blocking his way through a narrow pass placed by this goddess, but it only grows larger as he fights it. Hesiod attributes fourteen children to her, the Kakodaimones, and identifies her as the daughter of Erebos and Nyx, but Homer names her the sister of Ares, whom she often accompanies. She is best remembered, however, for a wedding she was not invited to, which she disrupted by throwing a certain golden object. For ten points, name this bitter Greek goddess whose Apple of Discord sparked the Trojan War.
ANSWER: Eris [do not accept Discord or Discordia; do accept “Aporia” on the first clue]
10. As a student, he formed a literary fraternity called the Gordion Knot. One of his earliest manuscripts, called “Essay on Geology”, was never published, while he classified animals as “Mutes” in a major work discussing a titular North American animal. He served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was given the Indian name Tayadaowuhkuh, and with the help of Ely Parker, he wrote The League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee or Iroquois. In one of his most famous works, he said that societies progress through savage, barbaric , and civilized stages, while another work studied kinship in Native American cultures. FTP, name this American anthropologist, author of Ancient Society and Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family.
ANSWER: Lewis Henry Morgan
11. Though he dropped out of college to join the Marines, the Japanese surrendered before his ship left San Francisco, so this man did not see active service until the Korean War. A World War II VD ward is the location of his only play, In the Clap Shack, and he discusses American expatriates living in Italy in 1960’s Set This House on Fire. He first garnered acclaim with his 1951 book about a dysfunctional Virginia family, Lie Down in Darkness, which won the Rome Prize. His two most controversial works, however, center on an 1831 slave rebellion, and the love affair between a Polish Holocaust survivor and an American writer. For ten points, name this author who died on November 1, 2006, best remembered for The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie’s Choice.
ANSWER: William Styron
12. The line “And things won’t ever change” is added in a popular cover version, but the original was written by Billy Adams, “Big” Jim Paterson, and lead vocalist Kevin Rowland. The singer refers to people who “wear beaten down eyes / Sunk in smoke dried faces,” contrasting with the singer and his addressee, who are “far too young and clever.” Beginning with lyrics about “Poor old Johnny Ray” who “sounded sad upon the radio,” the singer goes on to confess, “With you in that dress, /My thoughts…verge on dirty.” For ten points, identify this hit from the album Too-Rye-Ay by Dexys Midnight Runners.
ANSWER: “Come On Eileen”
13. The Clausius-Mossotti equation can be used to relate this macroscopic quantity to its microscopic equivalent. At the surface of a material with a nonzero value of this, the bound surface charge is equal to its component normal to the surface, and its divergence is equal to the negative of the bound charge density. In a linear medium, it is equal to epsilon-naught times the electric susceptibility times the applied electric field. For ten points, what is this vector field indicating the response of a dielectric medium to an applied external electric field?
ANSWER: electric polarization density (accept “susceptibility” or “dielectric constant” after the first sentence)
14. New York Times correspondent Tillman Durdin did initial reporting and American missionary John Magee shot 16mm film and photographs, while civilians who worked against it included Minnie Vautrin and Nazi Party member John Rabe, who established a “safety zone”. British correspondent Harold Timperley was the first to estimate the death toll at 300,000, while historian Iris Chang committed suicide after writing her acclaimed account, unable to deal with the tragedy she had uncovered. Shiro Azuma is one of the few perpetrators who has publicly admitted his participation in, FTP, what 1937-38 event in which invading Japanese troops massacred the inhabitants of a Chinese city?
ANSWER: Rape of Nanking (or Nanjing) or Nanking Massacre; accept Nanking Incident from Japanese ultranationalists
15. This disease, once known in England as Boulogne sore throat, is caused by a namesake toxin that inhibits DNA translation by inactivating eukaryotic elongation factor-2. Edwin Klebs and Friedrich Löffler discovered the Corynebacterium responsible for this illness, while the discoverer of its toxin and antitoxin was the first recipient of the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Pierre Bretonneau coined its modern name from the leathery pseudomembrane of fibrin, dead cells, and bacteria that cover the throat and nose. Massive outbreaks occurred after the fall of the Soviet Union, though the most famous epidemic struck Nome, Alaska, in 1925, but Gunnar Kaasen and his sled dog Balto arrived with the necessary antitoxin. For ten points, name this disease that, since 1980, children have been largely immunized against alongside pertussis and tetanus.
ANSWER: Diphtheria
16. One of his plays takes its title from a celebratory custom that occurs on the Day of the Rat. That work, The Uprooted Pine, eventually ends in the marriage of the courtesan Azuma. His first play was a historical drama, The Soga Successors, in 1683, and his most popular play in his own time was also historical, a play about dynastic struggles in China, The Battles of Coxinga. However, he is better known today for his domestic plays, or sewamono, some of which were set at Amijima and Sonezaki. For ten points, who is this kabuki playwright, best known for The Love Suicides at Sonezaki?
ANSWER: Chikamatsu Monzaemon or Sugimori Nobumori
17. In one of his poems, the title character replies to the accusation “You do not play things as they are” by saying “Things as they are / Are changed upon” the title object, while another mentions Susanna among the “simpering Byzantines”. His most famous collection contains a poem about the theological ruminations of a peignoir-wearing woman and another that urges, “Let be be finale of seem.” For ten points, identify this poet of “The Man With the Blue Guitar” as well as the collection Harmonium, which contains such poems as “Sunday Morning” and “The Emperor of Ice Cream.”
ANSWER: Wallace Stevens
18. A renovation of this painting in 1983 by Alfio del Serra revealed once again the hazy clouds in the background that Vasari had once described. On the left, a man’s grey-robed body is aimed away from the viewer, while his head is tilted around to look back at the viewer. The red-robed figure on the right rests an open book on his right knee, and represents John the Evangelist, while the figure on the left bears a cross, and represents St. Francis. The central figure holds a book resting on her thigh, while two angels are hugging her feet, which rest on an octagonal pedestal. The monstrous figures on that pedestal, which some experts have identified as locusts or sphinxes, give the painting its name. FTP, name this painting of Mary holding her child, probably the most famous work of Andrea del Sarto.
ANSWER: Madonna of the Harpies or Madonna delle Arpie
19. These objects are distinguished from other types by a lack of hydrogen and helium I lines, and display a 6150 angstrom Silicon II line. They can be found in elliptical galaxies as well as spiral galaxies, which implies that short-lived stars are probably not involved. At peak luminosity, they all have an absolute magnitude of approximately -19.6, while after 50 days, they dim at a constant rate of 0.015 magnitudes per day. In 1998 their study led researchers to conclude that the universe’s expansion was accelerating. They are believed to result in a close binary system when a white dwarf accretes enough matter from a companion star to initiate a runaway nuclear reaction. FTP, these are what stellar explosions that can be used as standard candles?