MLK 2007
Packet by Matt Lafer, Paul Litvak, and Leo Wolpert
1. His cosmology was a conjunction of the astronomy of Alpetragius and the chemistry of Paracelsus. In one of his early works, he compared his theories to a bee gathering honey, in contrast to a spider spinning a web. In that work he also attacked the work of Telesio, as an extension of earlier criticisms in On the Principles and Origins According to the Fables of Cupid and Coleum. In the second part of his most famous work he discussed his catalog of errors in human ideas, which are caused by “the Cave”, “the market-place,” or “the Tribe.” These Idols were later expounded upon in The Advancement of Learning. FTP, identify this philosopher who advocated for the scientific method in his Novum Organum and wrote The New Atlantis.
Answer: Francis Bacon
2. Their implementation is often different from their formal representation, particularly in the ability to handle squares, which is NP-hard. Quantification can be difficult sometimes because of greedy evaluation. A backtracking algorithm can be used to implement them, while another method transforms a nondeterministic finite automata to a deterministic finite automata. Formally equivalent to a type 3 Chomsky grammar, the notation for it was developed by Stephen Kleene and later adapted by Ken Thompson for use in QED [pron. “ked”]. Some of its conventions include using a dollar sign to find a newline, and using brackets to demarcate a character to be found. Used extensively in Perl and the Unix command grep, this is, FTP, what system of pattern matching?
Answer: regular expressions (also accept regex or regexp)
3. In the third part of this work, the protagonist visits with the Lehrs and takes a bath in a river, chastising himself for his idleness. In an earlier scene, one character writes a letter to his wife Sylvia while another wanders around a graveyard where a family is burying a little girl. A dentist named Mr. Tench dominates the first scene, and after visiting with him, the protagonist encounters Coral Fellows and his own illegitimate daughter Brigida. An untrustworthy character known as the “mestizo” appears halfway through this work, which features the “gringo” and the “lieutenant,” and the disreputable Padre Jose. Also published under the title The Labyrinthine Ways, FTP, name this story of a “whisky priest” combating suppression of the church in Mexico in the 1930’s, a work by Graham Greene.
Answer: The Power and the Glory
4. Civil War clashes that were fought in this state include the Battle of Mossy Creek, which resulted in the holding of Talbott’s Station, and was part of a generally successful Union campaign that concluded at the Battle of Fair Garden under Samuel Sturgis. Sites of other battles here included Bean’s Station, Hatchie’s Bridge, Spring Hill, and Wauhatchie. A more famous battle in this state saw the capture of Orchard Knob and Lookout Mountain and the storming of Missionary Ridge. Home to Fort Pillow and Fort Donelson, FTP, name this state which also saw the Battle of Stones River or Murfreesborough as well as the Battle of Chattanooga.
Answer: Tennessee
5. Along with the Mona Lisa, pieces of this work appear in Jasper Johns’ Racing Thoughts, and its form resembles that of Melchior Broederlam’s work in Dijon. The limewood figures of Nikolaus Hagenauer accompanied this work in its original location. The predella contains the Lamentation of Mary and Mary Magdalene, and it presents three views, the innermost showing the Temptation of St. Anthony and St. Paul in the desert, and the outermost panels showing St Anthony and St Sebastian flanking a Gothic-style Crucifixion scene. FTP, name this work made for the monastery of St. Anthony in the namesake town, a famous altarpiece done by Matthias Grunewald.
Answer: Isenheim Altarpiece
6. Heroin addicts who accidentally injected the chemical MPTP in the 1980s developed it, and a mutated UCHL1 gene has been shown to cause it in exactly one family. Its symptoms are similar to those found in Hallervorden-Spatz disease, and its ideopathic variety always features the presence of Lewy bodies and neuron loss. Directly caused by a loss of certain neurons in the substantia nigra, treatments for it include injection of GDNF to slow neuron death, and ingestion of L-DOPA to increase the amount of dopamine in the brain and alleviate symptoms such as bradykinesia and rigity. FTP, name this disease first publicized by its English namesake in 1817 in An Essay on the Shaking Palsy, which famously afflicts Michael J. Fox.
Answer: Parkinson's Disease
7. The second half of the poem imagines a “new, sweet world” where “gone was the weasel head, the snout, the jowl!” and where there would be “athletes clean.” This is preceded by a section describing “walking lepers”, “rank on rank” as well as “drabs from the alleyways” and “drug fiends pale.” The title character “died blind”, although his eyes were “still dazed by the ways of God.” Intended as a “poem game” to attract the readership of the common man, it first instructs the accompaniment of a bass drum beaten loudly. Sung to the tune of “The Blood of the Lamb,” this is, FTP, what poem concerning the founder of the Salvation Army, written by Vachel Lindsey?
Answer: “General William Booth Enters Into Heaven”
8. This ancient city thrived under Untash Gal, who built the religious site of Chogha Zanbil nearby. Herodotus relates that Histiaeus of Miletus was brought to this city and served as an advisor, but wanted to leave, and so encouraged an Ionian revolt. The site of the victory stele of Naram-Sin, it was utterly destroyed by Ashurbanipal in 646 B.C. Initially the capital of the Elamite kingdom, it was later a frequent refuge of the Parthians from their other capital at Ctesiphon, and also was a terminus of the Royal Road built by Darius I. FTP, name this great city of ancient Persia, with a shorter name than Persepolis.
Answer: Susa (Shush, Shushan)
9. He was ridiculed off a stage for an early attempt to play “Body and Soul” in double time. The drummer Jo Jones once threw a cymbal at his feet because he lost the key in a jam session. Later, he played with Earl Hines and studied with Maury Deutsch. Following this, he teamed up with a new group of musicians during jam sessions at Minton’s Playhouse. This led to hits like “Now’s the Time” and “Thriving on a Riff.” He once said that he devised his most famous musical innovation while playing the song “Cherokee” with Buddy Fleet. Best known for his collaboration with Dizzy Gillespie on the Savoy Sessions, he was done in by drug addiction. FTP, identify this Kansas City native, a jazz saxophonist and co-founder of bebop nicknamed “Bird.”
Answer: Charlie Parker
10. One class of this phylum contains special secreting cells called rhabdites, while a part of another class has a type of vestigial vagina known as Laurer’s Canal, and other classes feature a defined syncytial tegument. Best represented in separate classes by Clonorchis, Taenia, and Dugesia, the most developed class features a scolex or knob head, behind which are generated proglottids and flame cells. The above-represented classes are the Turbellarians, the Cestodians, and the Trematodes. Comprising the planarians, flukes, and tapeworms, FTP, what is this simple acoelamate phylum with a long name.
Answer: Phylum Platyhelminthes
11. One character recorded the hit song “Let’s go to the Mall” as a Tiffany-like pop sensation during her teen years in Canada. Another character has a gay black brother James, played by Wayne Brady, who announces that he is engaged. Two of the main characters were married by a ship captain for 12 seconds in international waters off the coast of Atlantic City, where they frantically fled to elope. Narrated by the voice of Bob Saget, this show features Neil Patrick Harris as carefree single guy Barney and Alyson Hannigan as Lily. FTP, name this CBS sitcom centered around a guy telling his kids how he came to know the titular relative.
Answer: “How I Met Your Mother”
12. In a famous work by this author, the title character pays Jean Breville to seduce her, asking, “can love be merely this?” His first work dealt with the psychological implications of impotency and a famous novel of his follows a character who deserts his post as a cavalry lieutenant in Nancy. Two lesser-known works are his extensive biography of the composer Rossini and his autobiographical Life of Henry Brulard. His early work On Love proposed a rational analysis of romantic passion, while Memoirs of an Egotist appeared posthumously. His namesake syndrome occurs when one becomes overwhelmed by unfathomable cultural riches. FTP, name this author who wrote about Fabrice Del Dongo and the Battle of Waterloo in The Charterhouse of Parma and about Julian Sorel in The Red and the Black.
Answer: Stendhal (or Marie Henri Beyle)
13. This man’s best friend spoke of the “blood of the innocent Abel” after this man’s death, an event that occurred upon his return from the “Admirable Congress” and may have been instigated by Agustin Gamarra or Jose Maria Obando. Minor military actions of his include that over Jose de Canterac at the Battle of Junin, and the quelling of a rebellion in the Charcas province. His greatest victory came against Melchor Aymerich and Jose de la Serna, at the battles of Pichincha and Ayacucho respectively. FTP, name this man, the liberator of Ecuador and a lieutenant of Simon Bolivar, who shares his last name with a capital of Bolivia.
Answer: Antonio Jose de Sucre Alcala
14. A 1994 paper by Bodenhausen and his colleagues demonstrated that this idea leads to increased heuristic processing. Schwartz and Clore showed that congruency effects on its measurement only hold when people are unaware of the source of bias. Studies by Gilbert and Wilson of faculty members receiving tenure indicated that people are bad at predicting it. Famously, Martin Seligman argued that psychologists do not study it enough and authored a book on its “authentic” variety. The nation of Bhutan announced that they would focus on it, rather than GDP, as a measure of its country’s success, while utililitarians try to maximize it. FTP, identify this hedonic state, the pursuit of which is a self evident truth in the Declaration of Independence.
Answer: happiness accept reasonable equivalents
15. It is the product of a Maurer-Cartan frame and its co-frame. This function appears in the orthogonality constraint used in both the Car-Parrinello method and the Chebyshev rational functions. The t’Hooft symbol combines it with the Levi-Civita symbol, and it is a less general form of the Iverson bracket. Its index usually is represented by square brackets, which indicates its use in discrete time applications rather than its similarly named relation. Often used to represent the identity matrix, FTP, name this mathematical function of two variables that is equal to 1 if the two variables are equal and equal to zero otherwise, a certain delta function that is not the Dirac.
Answer: Kronecker delta function
16. In one tradition, she has a hapless son named Mabuz whose territory is raided by Iweret. Sometimes she is seen as a daughter of Dyonas, who married a niece of the Duchess of Burgundy and received half the Forest of Briogne as dowry. Worshipped at the Brocolitia shrine on Hadrian’s Wall, she helped another man triumph over Accolon, who possessed a powerful instrument. Sometimes known as Nimue or Viviane, after the death of Ban she took to caring for Lancelot. FTP, name this mysterious woman who also imprisons her infatuated suitor Merlin and most famously presents Excalibur to King Arthur, named for her residence in a body of water.
Answer: Lady of the Lake (also accept names for her like Nimue, Viviane, Niniane, Nyneve, Niamh but only before the mention of “Nimue,” prompt after)
17. This drama’s plot follows two parallel stories, a comic plot written in prose, and a romance plot written in iambic pentameter. The climax of the comic plot comes in Act III’s Grotto Scene, and ends with one character exclaiming, “If their necessities and ours was known / They have more need for two, than we of one…” The confusion at the center of the romance plot began when, many years before, a king usurps the throne of Syracuse and both the wife of the true queen and his own wife Eudoxia flee to a remote location accompanied by Hermogenes. In the end, Doralice and Rodophil as well as Palamede and Melantha get together, and Leonidas takes his rightful place on the throne, forgiving Polydamas for his crimes. FTP, name this 1672 drama by John Dryden that was made into a series of engravings by William Hogarth, about matrimony.
Answer: Marriage A-La-Mode
18. The “Night of the Ducks” was mostly a result of the growing threat of this nation, and “Operation Blue Bat” was the US response to Camille Chamoun’s government possibly allying with it. In one of its governing territories, it set up a “chairman of the executive council, a post held by Nureddin Kuhala. Despite the efforts of Salah al-Din al-Bitar and Michel Aflaq, it fell apart following the coup of Karim an-Nahlawi and the resignation of its vice-president, the Ba’athist Akram al-Hawrani. Briefly combined with Yemen in 1958, FTP, name this political entity led by Gamal Nasser, a brief 1958 to 1961 merging of Egypt and Syria.
Answer: United Arab Republic (or U.A.R.)
19. This body’s only named ridge is Kepler Dorsum and its craters include Roche, Todd, and d’Arrest. It has been photographed by Mariner 9 and its namesake 1988 Russian mission, which actually sent two probes, the first of which was lost. B.P. Sharpless, for whom one of its craters is named, noted that it was spiraling rapidly inward and Iosif Shklovskii provided an explanation for the drag, but concluded this body might be hollow. Its largest crater Stickney is named for the wife of its discoverer, Asaph Hall, who also discovered its smaller companion. Named for a son of Ares and Aphrodite, FTP, name this largest moon of Mars, the partner of Deimos.