1998 Technophobia III -- Caltech Packet I

Tossups

1. Described by Justice Warren as `a seriously disturbed individual with pronounced sexual fantasies,' he was convicted of kidnapping and rape after the 18-year-old victim picked him out of a lineup, and he confessed after two hours of interrogation in the Phoenix police station. The law enforcement community was outraged when--for 10 points--whose 1963 conviction was overturned because he had not been told he had the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney?

Answer: Ernesto Miranda

2. The U.S. government currently has no facility for producing this substance. Russia and Canada are the only suppliers, but Russia is a politically unsuitable source and Canada will not sell it for weapons purposes. The easiest way to make it is to bombard lithium-6 with neutrons, but in 1934 Rutherford and associates made it by collision of deuterium nuclei. For 10 points--what is this heaviest isotope of hydrogen?

Answer: tritium

3. He wrote two operas, `The Spanish Hour' and `The Child and the Enchantments,' but lamented that the music for a third was in his head when in 1933 he developed severe aphasia, losing his ability to read and sign his name. For ten points, name this French composer of the ballet `Daphnis and Chloe,' and `Bolero.'

Answer: (Joseph-)Maurice Ravel

4. It's not the movie `2001', but a giant space baby appears to be inhabiting the sun. The control room is strongly reminiscent of `Dr. Who', another BBC production. All the characters' needs are supplied by machinery and the show is billed by PBS as introducing children to the `magic of high tech.' For 10 points--what television show features Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa, and Po, creatures which can receive TV signals and display the picture on their stomachs?

Answer: Teletubbies

5. In her memoirs, `All in the Day's Work,' she wrote of discovering the `author of [her] father's woes' in Henry Demarest Lloyd's 1894 work `Wealth Against Commonwealth,' which led to her plans to `write the great American novel,' based on the same subject as Lloyd's work. For ten points name this author of biographies of Lincoln and Napoleon, whose 1902 serial in McClure's magazine led the Supreme Court to break up the Standard Oil trust in 1911.

Answer: Ida Minerva Tarbell

6. His name was John, but his first wife, Constance Adams, once mysteriously referred to him as James, just before he went to fetch Isa Whitney from an opium den. He sometimes claimed to have been wounded in the leg, but sometimes it was his shoulder that had been struck by a Jezail bullet at the fatal battle of Maiwand. Inconsistencies like these don't inspire confidence in the memoirs of, for ten points, what medical doctor who took up rooms at 221B Baker Street along with Sherlock Holmes?

Answer: John H. Watson

7. She was William the Conqueror's great-aunt and provided the first link between the English throne and the house of Normandy. She was the wife of King Ethelred the Unready and by him mother of Saint Edward the Confessor; then she married Canute the Great and gave birth to Hardecanute. For ten points, name this woman who shares her first name with a handsome, clever, and rich girl who marries Mr. Knightley in an eponymous novel by Jane Austen.

Answer: Emma

8. The voltage produced is negative for most metals, but positive for beryllium, zinc and cadmium, indicating the conduction of electric currents by holes. Used to measure the mobility and density of charge carriers in a material, the development of a transverse field in a material in a magnetic field through which a current perpendicular to the magnetic field is run is known, for ten points, as what effect?

Answer: Hall effect

9. Two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. For 10 points--these are the contents of whose trunk as he departs on a savage journey to the heart of the American dream in the book `Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'?

Answer: Hunter S. Thompson (also accept Raoul Duke)
(accept Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas before `whose')

10. William and Andrew Smith fabricated their first cough drops in this city around 1850, and this temporary state capital was the site where New Yorkers ratified the federal Constitution in 1788. Its name, which comes from the Indian for `waterfall,' is often muttered by TV lawyer John Cage to control his stuttering. For ten points name this seat of Dutchess County, the home of Vassar College.

Answer: Poughkeepsie

11. The Mafia named them The Big Thing, but they were renamed in 1967 by producer James Guercio, who suggested that, in the manner of classical symphonies, they give their albums numbers instead of titles. Richard Daley threatened to sue over the new name, although in 1984 their namesake bus system used the band's hit `Does Anybody Know What Time It Is?' in advertisements. For ten points, name this group whose most famous lead vocalist was Peter Cetera.

Answer: Chicago Transit Authority

12. Made along with man, he eateth grass as an ox. His strength is in his loins, his force is in the navel of his belly. He moveth his tail like a cedar, and his bones are as strong pieces of brass, as bars of iron. Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not. For 10 points--name this monster from the book of Job, sometimes identified with the hippopotamus.

Answer: behemoth (prompt on `hippopotamus')

13. This idea, proposed by Robert Ettinger in 1964, was first tried by the 73-year-old Dr. James Bedford in 1967. About twenty of the sixty people who have tried it failed because their money ran out, but the rest can still hope. Contrary to persistent rumor, Walt Disney did not try it, but instead was cremated and interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California. For ten points, what process, available in whole-body or brain-only versions, may offer you a way to cheat death?

Answer: cryonic suspension (accept: freezing or suspended animation)

14. To its east lay the city of Riohacha, obscured by an impenetrable mountain range, to its south lay swamps, and to the west a boundless extension of water. Its name means `banana' in Bantu, appropriate since it was controlled by a banana company which was finally driven out by the rains of four years, eleven months and two days. For ten points, name this South American city founded by Jose Arcadio Buendia, the setting for several works of Gabriel Garcia-Marquez.

Answer: Macondo

15. Among those known by this name were the ineffectual Egyptian ruler Amasis, who needed the help of Greek armies to defend against the Persians; Michael III, who restored the use of icons in the Byzantine church; and Ottoman emperor Selim II, who never took interest in governing and retreated to his addiction. For ten points, these men all shared what derogatory nickname, referring to the vice they shared with Mickey Mantle and Barney Gumble?

Answer: the Drunkard (accept the Sot or close equivalents)

16. A consequence of the first law of thermodynamics, it states that the heat absorbed or evolved in any chemical reaction is a fixed quantity and is independent of the path of the reaction or the number of steps taken to obtain the reaction. For ten points, name this law which is often used to determine heats of reaction and formation from the sums and differences of the heats of intermediate reactions.

Answer: Hess's Law

17. Called Wagadu by its rulers, it was known by the title given to its king. Its inhabitants, the Soninke, first acted as middlemen between the Arab salt traders to the north and the gold and ivory producers to the south, later conquering these lands and controlling the gold trade. For ten points, name this medieval empire situated between the Sahara and the Niger River in what is now Mauritania, not to be confused with the modern nation whose capital is Accra.

Answer: Ghana

18. His increased cranial capacity and reduced molar tooth size foreshadowed trends seen in Homo erectus and later humans. He walked efficiently bipedally, and, as evidenced by hand fossils discovered at Olduvai Gorge by Louis Leakey, was capable of precise manipulation of objects, including the shaping of stone with tools. For ten points, name this first member of the genus Homo, whose name reflects this mechanical facility.

Answer: Homo habilis

19. One work of this title was inspired by the Great Drumsheugh case, an 1809 Edinboro scandal in which a malicious child said the two headmistresses at her school had an inordinate affection for each other. A second of the same title refers to it as `a pause in the day's occupations, between the dark and the daylight when night is beginning to lower,' during which the poet plays with his three daughters. For ten points give the shared name of the Longfellow poem and the Lillian Hellman play.

Answer: The Children's Hour

20.Describing his recent boss as `a richly qualified leader' who is `exasperatingly stupid' in his personal life, he noted that Clinton's presidency `will always be...stained by the episode with Monica Lewinsky.' For ten points, name this spin doctoring successor of Dee Dee Myers, who resigned his position as White House Press Secretary on October 1, 1998.

Answer: Michael McCurry

21. His wife's father disinherited her because she married him, and his plot to defraud a neighbor failed, so he decided to seek his fortune in Virginia Colony. He was appointed to the council of Governor Berkeley, his cousin by marriage, but fought with Berkeley over the Indian policy. Favoring territorial expansion, he organized an expedition against the Indians, which Berkeley denounced as a rebellion. For ten points, who took control of most of Virginia before suddenly dying in 1676?

Answer: Nathaniel Bacon

22. Architecture of this style, emphasizing asymmetrical design, S-shaped curves, and mirrors, includes the Munich churches of Wieskirche and Vierzehnheiligen. In Italy, the movement was centered in Venice, exemplified by the vistas of Canaletto and the large-scale decorative paintings of Tiepolo. For ten points, name this intimate and playful artistic style most notably favoured by the French painters Perronau, Boucher, and Fragonard.

Answer: rococo

23. Although he relentlessly teased his college roommate for getting into Princeton to study acting, years later, as a starving contemporary literature grad student at Yale, his friend Jason Beghe suggested he earn money making commercials, and he never went back to academia. For ten points name this man who went from Lowenbrau ads, to Bruce in `Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead' to the studly Fox Mulder on TV's `The X-Files.'

Answer: David Duchovny

24. While a hermit in Subiaco, several monks asked him to lead them, but his regime became difficult and they plotted to kill him. Upon blessing a pitcher of poisoned wine it broke into pieces, and he fled the area, founding twelve monasteries and destroying the temple of Apollo at Monte Cassino, where he built his premier monastery. For ten points, name this saint who, with the help of his sister Scholastica, wrote the Rule for the order of monks which are now named for him.

Answer: St. Benedict of Nursia

25. Rabbi Shlomo Benizri said of her, `During all the generations the Jewish people sent light to the world, and now we send darkness to the world.' Homosexuality is a crime in Israel and transsexuals have been condemned by government ministers, but--for 10 points--what transsexual singer won the 1998 Eurovision contest for Israel with her song `Diva'?

Answer: Dana International (accept either name)