- His first novel, The Great Weaver of Kashmir, marked his
renunciation of his Catholic faith and demonstrated his growing
appetite for Socialism. Independent People, The Light of the
World, and Salka Valka reflect utopian ideals, while his
later novels, such as Paradise Reclaimed and The Fish Can
Sing discuss philosophical issues. For 10 points--name this
controversial author of Iceland's Bell, who won the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1955.
answer: Halldor Laxness or Halldor Kiljan Gudjonsson
- Falls such as the Aughrabies Falls make this river unnavigable,
and the Bogoeberg Dam prevents its enormous amounts of silt from
clogging reservoirs and hindering irrigation. Rising in the Maluti
Mountains, it flows northwest, then west, forming the boundary of the
Orange Free State and Cape Province and part of Namibia's southern
border before emptying into the Atlantic Ocean. For 10 points--name
this South African River which was named for a Dutch ruling house, not
a colour.
answer: Orange River
- A hostage of the sultan Murad II, this Prince of Emathia was given
the rank of bey and a name after Alexander the Great. A Vivaldi opera
and ballads by Ronsard and Longfellow tell of his humane war tactics,
which earned him the title "Athlete of Christendom," during the
thirteen times he repulsed the Ottoman Turks who attempted to overrun
his nation. For 10 points--name this man honoured by a statue in his
namesake square in Tirana, the national hero of Albania.
answer: Skanderbeg or George Kastrioti
- Two NYU students on their way to UCLA are arrested in Beechum
County for murdering the clerk of a Sac-o-Suds, and hire a graduate of
the Brooklyn Academy of Law. After being charged with contempt and
getting into a fight with a pool-playing redneck, Vincent Gambini saves
the day with his ex-girlfriend's car smarts and his knowledge of the
proper timing of grits. For 10 points--this is the plot of what 1992
movie starring Ralph Macchio, Marisa Tomei and Joe Pesci?
answer: My Cousin Vinny
- The lowest energy state of a partially filled electron shell has
the largest total spin allowed by the exclusion principle. The total
orbital angular momentum of the lowest-lying states has the largest
value consistent with the largest total spin and the exclusion
principle. For 10 points--these, along with the fact that electrons
occupy degenerate orbitals so as to maximize the number of electrons of
the same spin, make up whose rules for electron configurations?
answer: Hund's rules
- This nymph of Roman myth tended her fruits and orchards, shut away
from the rest of the world, and never let any suitor approach her.
Disguised as an old woman, her lover entered her gardens and fiercely
wooed her, but she did not respond until he dropped his disguse,
whereupon she fell deeply in love with him and invited him to stay.
For 10 points--name this lover of Vertumnus who shares her name with a
southern California college.
answer: Pomona
- Introduction of foreign arts and music influenced the development
of Chinese culture, and China's territory expanded to include Korea,
Vietnam, West Turkestan, and parts of Iran. Founded by Li Yuan, other
famous rulers of this dynasty included Hsuan-tsung, who ruled at its
peak, and Wu-hou, the first and only reigning empress in Chinese
history. Other notable figures include the revolutionary An Lushan and
the poets Li Po and Tu Fu. For 10 points, name this dynasty which
lasted from 618-907, and was succeeded by the Song.
answer: Tang dynasty
- According to Vasari, this man was abducted and enslaved by the
Moors, but was freed after painting a portrait of his owner. His work
was influenced by Masaccio, whose work he saw in the Church of Santa
Maria del Carmine where, in 1421, he took his vows. For 10
points--name this eventual ex-Carmelite famous for sumptuous
altarpieces such as The Annunciation and Coronation of the
Virgin.
answer: Fra Filippo Lippi
- This son of a greenhouse owner said of his poems, "Some of these
pieces begin in the mire, as if man is no more than a shape writhing
from the old rocks." A varsity tennis coach at the University of
Washington, he won a National Book Award and the Bollingen Prize in
1959 for Words of the Wind, which contains "I Knew A Woman."
For 10 points, name this poet whose poems "Cuttings," "Night Crow," and
"My Papa's Waltz" appear in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1954 collection
The Waking.
answer: Theodore Huebner Roethke
- One hundred fifty years after Jonah preached repentance to the
Assyrians, this prophet returned to pass judgment on Nineveh. Now, he
predicted, God will not allow repentance, and will wipe out the
Assyrian Capital with a flood and restore Jerusalem to its former
grandeur. However, destruction came not from a flood but from the
Chaldeans. For 10 points--name this minor prophet whose book appears
between those of Micah and Habakkuk.
answer: Nahum
- Swamps cover a great portion of East Central North America.
Periodic rises in sea level create cyclothems of shale, sandstone and
coal in Illinois and Indiana. Africa begins to collide with the East
Coast in the Appalachian and Oachita Orogenies. Mountains form and
erode in Northern Italy and Colorado, and the Absaroka Sequence is
deposited in the North American interior. These events occurred in--for
10 points--what latter half of the Carboniferous epoch, named for the
state in which many rocks from this period were found?
answer: Pennsylvanian period (accept Late
Carboniferous epoch before 'Carboniferous')
- A group of 19th century poets led by Andreos Kalvos bears this
geographical name, as does a musical mode from which the major scale was
derived and the school to which the Milesian philosophers Archelaus,
Diogenes of Apollonia, Anaximenes, Anaximander, and Anaxagoras belonged.
For 10 points--what name is also given to a body of water containing the
islands of Cephalonia, Zechynthus, Leucas, Paxos, Ithaca, Cythera and
Corfu?
answer: Ionian
- Paralysis caused by alcoholic epilepsy ended his career at its
height, just after his opera Sorotchinsi Fair premiered. As an
officer of the Preobrazhensky Guard, he met Borodin and set out to
develop a national Russian style. Among his works are a piano suite
based on Vladimir Hartmann's works and an orchestral fantasy used in
Disney's Fantasia. For 10 points--name this member of the Five,
who composed Pictures at an Exhibition and Night on Bald
Mountain.
answer: Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky
- The insidious exploits of this wealth-obsessed family after World
War I are featured in the novels The White Monkey, The
Silver Spoon, and Swan Song. The matriarch, Irene, falls in
love with a young architect who dies, and eventually divorces her
husband, Soames, a man of property who assumes his property includes
her. For 10 points--name this family who also appear in In
Chancery and To Let, the subject of a saga by John
Galsworthy.
answer: Forsyte (accept The Forsyte Saga)
[Editor's note: No, there is no 'h' in Forsyte.]
- It is a mountainous country in the Tien Shan and Pamir ranges that
contains 24,409 foot Mount Pobeda, also known as Victory Peak. The Chu
river forms its boundary with Kazakhstan, and it is also bordered by
China on the southeast, Uzbekistan on the west, and Tajikistan on the
south. For 10 points--name this Commonwealth of Independent States
nation, whose largest cities are Osh and the capital, Bishkek.
answer: Kyrgyztan
- This novel focuses on a Prufrockian high school student who
actually wonders, "Do I dare disturb the universe?" Archie, the leader
of the Vigils at Trinity High School, orders Jerry Renault to refuse to
participate in the school's traditional fundraising activity, but the
plan backfires, the school loses money, and Jerry meets a violent end.
For 10 points--this is the plot of what mainstay of Catholic school
reading lists by Robert Cormier?
answer: The Chocolate War
- Take the vector cross product of an infinitessimal length of wire
with the unit displacement vector, multiply by the magnitude of the
current times the permeability of free space, and divide by the product
of 4 pi and the square of the distance between point and wire.
Integrate the result over an arbitrary steady current distribution. I
have just described--for 10 points--what formula for computing the
magnetic field at a point, named after two French physicists?
answer: Biot-Savart Law
- Its existence was discovered when, on March 8, 1971, unknown
persons stole every document in the Media, Pennsylvania office of the
FBI. Although it interfered in the marriage of Martin Luther King Jr.,
individuals like Elijah Muhammad and Stokey Carmichael were less often
targeted for surveillance and disruption than groups such as Students
for a Democratic Society, the Youth International Party and the Ku Klux
Klan. For 10 points--give the acronym for this brainchild of J. Edgar
Hoover, a counterintelligence program against American citizens.
answer: COINTELPRO
- His mom loved Ben Casey and christened him Vincent Edward. In his
only All-Star appearance, he led off the game with a home run and was
named MVP in a 5-3 American League victory. That game's telecast
featured an ad in which Michael Jordan and Joan Benoit Samuelson swore
he knew all kinds of stuff, but a certain musician disagreed. For 10
points--what Auburn graduate, although he considered football only a
hobby, wore #34 for the Raiders and won the Heisman trophy in 1985?
answer: Bo Jackson
- His Jungian psychoanalysts used his own drawings in therapy. Maybe
that's why people waxed poetic about the Jungian symbolism in his early
work, which was influenced by Miro, Picasso and Orozco and includes
works like Bird, Male and Female and Guardian of the
Secret. His trademark technique allowed him to record the scope of
his gestures using aluminum paint which he said "veiled the images" of
his earlier art. For 10 points--name this inventor of "action
painting" known as "The Dripper."
answer: (Paul) Jackson Pollock
- First detected in 1923 by Coster and von Hevesy, this transition
metal is recovered through the Kroll process. It is isovalent with
zirconium, so it is difficult to extract pure amounts of this Group IV
A element from zircon ore. Used in light bulbs and as a neutron
absorber in nuclear reactors--for 10 points--what element, atomic
number 73, was named for the Latin for Copenhagen and has symbol Hf?
answer: Hafnium
-
Like Descartes and Leibniz, he was a rationalist philosopher, but in his
greatest work he rejected Cartesian dualism in favor of the Pantheistic
view that God, man, and the physical world were all part of one substance.
His Theological-Political Treatise was published anonymously in
1670, but was banned in 1674 for its controversial views on the Bible and
Christian theology. For 10 points, name this Dutch Jewish philosopher and
lensgrinder, most famous for his masterpiece Ethics.
answer: Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza
- Located in Northeastern New England between branches of the
Penobscot River, this peak, whose name is Abnaki Indian for "main
mountain," is the chief attraction of Baxter State Park. It rises 5,267
feet above sea level and is an impressive sight, as it stands almost
alone, differing from most of the rest of the Appalachian Mountains.
For 10 points--name this highest point in Maine, the northern terminus
of the Appalachian Trail.
answer: Mount Katahdin (prompt on early "Baxter Peak")
- George Santayana, Sergei Prokofiev, Richard Nixon, Joe DiMaggio*,
Bernie Goetz, John F. Kennedy, Syngman Rhee, Jack Kerouac, Nikita
Krushchev, Doris Day, Charles de Gaulle, Toscanini, Marylin Monroe and
Albert Einstein are all out of order in their appearance, but are all
mentioned in--for 10 points--what 1989 hit by Billy Joel?
answer: We Didn't Start The Fire