- This 20th century British novelist drew on his
aeronautical engineering experience for his novel No Highway In The
Sky. His best known novel, however, is set in post nuclear war
Australia. For ten points, name this author of On the Beach.
Answer: Nevil _Shute_ Norway
- Song titles of this oratorio include "All We Like Sheep Have Gone
Astray", "For As In Adam All Die," "Unto Us a Son Is Given", and most
famously, the chorus for which King George III stood up, making it the
only oratorio with a 44th inning stretch. For ten points, name this
oratorio by Handel.
Answer: The _Messiah_
- While one definition of this word has to do with cooking poultry on
a spit, rabid sports fans will know it as the process of drafting
favorite players from teams around the league to create their own
personal All-Star teams, which then compete with each other. For ten points, name
this kind of league.
Answer: _rotisserie_ (note: do NOT accept hot
stove league or fantasy league!)
- "God save our queer old dean" and "It is
kisstomary to cuss the bride," are two famous
examples that have nothing to do with silverware of, for ten points,
what linguistic slip
that involves interchanging two consonants or syllables?
Answer: _Spoonerism_
- Though he had been granted a yearly pension by his nation for his
earlier work for the
independence movement, he stopped work in 1928 at the age of 63, but
lived another 29
years. He is known today by concert audiences primarily for his
Second Symphony as well
as the greatest Scandinavian violin concerto, but is most associated
with his
nationalistic epics. For ten points, what composer wrote the
Lemminkainen suite
containing The Swan of Tuonela?
Answer: Jean (Jan) _Sibelius_
- This game is based on a mathematical recreation centered on Paul
Erdös (AIR-dush), but
has wildly exceeded its forerunner in popularity. The idea is also
loosely related to a
John Guare play. For ten points, what primarily internet-based game
has an Oracle that
will put you in its Hall of Fame if you find someone with a number of
7 or higher?
Answer: The _Kevin Bacon Game_, or _Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon_
- In her 80-year life, she was a poet, a playwright, a scientist,
and a composer.
Appropriately enough, she was famous for having visions of Sophia,
the divine embodiment
of female wisdom. For ten points, what 12th century abbess is now
most famous for her
music, with many CDs of her work being released for her 900th
birthday this year?
Answer: _Hildegard_ von Bingen
- If you've read the article "Ring theoretic
properties of certain Hecke
algebras," you should have a deep understanding of this theorem.
In this paper,
Richard Taylor and his advisor completed the proof to a special case
of the Taniyama-
Weil-Shimura conjecture. What greater conclusion was proved, as a
result, about
which its namesake wrote in his copy of Diophantus's Arithmetica
- For ten points - "I have
discovered a truly remarkable proof, but this margin is too small to
contain it."
Answer: _Fermat's Last Theorem_ (accept "Fermat's Great
Theorem")
- He began in watch engraving at the École des Arts
Décoratifs at La Chau-de-
Fonds, where Charles L'Eplattenier - his only mentor -
convinced him to become an
architect. He would have won the 1927 contest to design the League
of Nations
building in Geneva had he turned in his entry in India ink, as
required; instead, his
project would only become the basis for all future United Nations
buildings. His Notre-
Dame-du-Haut is a terrible example of his style; it sacrifices much
functionalism for
superficiality. For ten points, name this architect, born
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, the inventor
of "Modulor" architecture.
Answer: _Le Corbusier_ (accept early buzz of _Jeanneret_)
- The last name's pronounced the same - you need only
give one of their last
names. The first one was born with the last name Taylor, and has
played Stephen
Pynchon and Geoffrey Tolwyn. The second contributed his voice to A
Bug's Life and
played Octavian in Cleopatra. The first dragged around his droogs in
a 1971 Kubrick
classic and the second played the little boy Joe in the original
Lassie Come Home. For ten points,
name these actors, one of whom recently died of cancer; the other
recently came back to
life as Mr. Roarke on Fantasy Island.
Answer: Malcolm _McDowell_ and Roderick "Roddy" (Andrew
Anthony Jude) _McDowall_
- Ani DiFranco's upcoming album's title features this
word repeated six times.
It's the one-word title of Peter Gabriel's upcoming album.
It's the one-word title of Right
Said Fred's album featuring I'm Too Sexy. For ten points, give the one-word
title of the latest
offering from R.E.M.
Answer: _Up_
- Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in Union Township
will see a new
visitor soon - and for the next fifteen years. Hopefully the
facility does not offer dance
classes, since it was at a dance that this murderess committed aggravated
manslaughter. For ten points, name this 20-year-old New Jersey student who will
probably serve
fewer than three years for birthing then killing her newborn at her
prom.
Answer: Melissa _Drexler_
- Located at 8.5 degrees North, 31.4 degrees East, this sea is
approximately 900 miles wide. Its first close-up description in 1969
was as "a collection of every variety of shapes, angularities,
and granularities - every variety of rock you could find." For
ten points, name this waterless misnomer, the landing spot of Apollo
11.
Answer: _Sea of Tranquility_ (accept "Mare
Tranquillitatis")
- This German count first saw the possiblities of aerial military
observeration while touring the Civil War battlefields in 1863. His
first attempts were unsuccesful, but with the advent of aluminum, his LZ
3 and 4 were bought by the German army after 30 years of
experimentation. For ten points, name this man, and you name the type of ship that
bombed England in the First World War.
Answer: Graf _Zeppelin_
- One was the queen of Jerusalem from 1192 to 1205. Another was
the
daughter of Philip IV of France and the wife of Edward II of England,
who
claimed the throne of France for her son Edward III upon the death
of
Philip's last son, Charles IV. For ten points, give the name these
two
women share with the queen of Spain from 1479 to 1504.
Answer: _Isabella_ or _Isabelle_
- Any subset of R-N that is closed and bounded. Any subset of a
metric space that is complete and totally bounded. By the
Bolzano-Weierstrass Theorem, any subset S of a metric space such that
any sequence in S has a subsequence that converges to a point in S.
By definition, any subset S of a metric space so that every open cover
of S has a finite subcover. For ten points, what 7-letter word
describes all these sets?
Answer: _compact_ (accept _sequentially compact_ before "open
cover")
- Five men take off in a hot air balloon from Richmond in the
closing days
of the Civil War and land at the title location. Although cut off
from
civilization, they manage to make nitroglycerin, furniture, and
electricity. Things go well until a dying captain Nemo tells them
that
their residence will soon explode due to volcanic activity. For
ten
points, name this work by Jules Verne, a sequel to _Twenty Thousand
Leagues Under the Sea._
Answer: The _Mysterious Island_
- In classical mechanics, it is a function defined as the sum of
the products of time derivatives of generalized coordinates with the
generalized momenta minus the Lagrangian of the system. In quantum
mechanics, it is an operator that, when applied to the wave function,
produces a constant multiple of a wave function. In both cases, it is
directly related to the energy of the system. For ten points, identify this
physical quantity, which was initially associated with the least action
principle when introduced in 1835 by the Irish mathematician whose
name it bears.
Answer: _Hamiltonian_
-
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!/ Long has it waved on high,/ And
many an eye has danced to see /That banner in the sky.
These lines helped to protect a frigate famous for its War of 1812
naval victories from being broken up. For ten points, what vessel, officially
known as USS Constitution, is the oldest commissioned ship in the
American Navy, largely because of Oliver Wendell Holmes' poem with the
same name?
Answer: _Old Ironsides_
- More is known of his life than of most medieval philosophers
because much of it is described in his famous "Historia
calamitatum", often translated as "The history of my
troubles". He also wrote commentary on St. Paul's letter to the
Romans, "A Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a
Christian", and a dialectical analysis of sin called "Scito te
ipsum" ("Know Thyself") in which he reached the
conclusion that human actions can not make one better or worse in the
sight of God. For ten points, name this logician and theologian, the author of
"Sic et non".
Answer: Peter _Abelard_ or Pierre _Abailard_ or Petrus _Abaelardus_
- It is 163 kilometers long, and contains 8 major bends. Its route
passes through Lake Manzala, At-Tinah, Al-Kab, Al-Baqar, Al-Ballah,
Ismailiah, Lake Timsah, Great Bitter Lake, Al-Kibrit, Small Bitter Lake,
Tisah, and Bur Tafiq. It shares its name with its south terminal, and
reaches Port Saeed in the north. For ten points, name this canal, which
connects the Mediterranean Sea to a Gulf of the Red Sea.
Answer: _Suez_ Canal
- Born into a provincial Jewish family and expected to follow in
his father's footsteps as a rabbi, he chose to pursue a secular
education by enrolling in the Ecole Normal together with friend and
future French socialist party leader Jean Jaures. He believed that only
science and educational reform could solve the condition of anomie - a
term he used to refer to social discontentness causes by lacking norms.
In works like "The Elmentary Forms of Religious Life", he
constructed concepts of the sacred and of totemism. For ten points, name this
French sociologist, author of "Le Suicide" and teacher of
Claude Levi-Strauss.
Answer: Emile _Durkheim_
- In the winter of 1805-1806, the Lewis and Clark
Expedition stayed in Fort
Clatsop. Five years later, this city was set up, as a trading post.
Under British control
from 1813-1818, it has since been owned by the US. Since 1844, it
has been the seat
of Clatsop County. For ten points, name this Oregon city named after the
founder of the American
Fur Company.
Answer: _Astoria_, OR
- The son of a barrel cooper and blacksmith, he ran away from home
in 1788 to join a Hussar regiment. Despite a storied resistance to
promotions, he became one of the 14 original marshals of the empire when
the rank was reinstated in 1804, largely because of his service under
Moreau and proximity to the court as the husband of one of Josephine's
maids of honour. Active in most of the major battles of the Napoleonic
wars, including Jena, Friedland, and the Spanish campaign, he was
created the prince of Moskowa for the battle of Borodino. For ten points, name
this marshal, whose legendary heroism was put to a final test in front
of a firing squad at Luxembourg Gardens in 1815 after the restored
Bourbons convicted him of treason.
Answer: Michel _Ney_
- U-238 to Th-234. U-234 to Th-230. Ra-226 to Rn-220. Po-210 to
Pb-206. For ten points, what particle, equivalent to a helium nucleus, is emitted
in all of these radioactive decays?
Answer: _alpha_ particle
- This Swiss man, once a personal tutor of Catherine the Great, died
in St. Petersburg
after having gone blind. However, his blindness evidently did not
impede his work, as two
constants, a number theoretic function, a line in a triangle, and a
method for approximating solutions to differential equations, and
numerous other mathematical objects bear his name. For ten points, what
mathematician was so prolific that his works were still appearing in
journals thirty years after he died?
Answer: Leonhard _Euler_ (OI-ler)
- One of the most frequent uses of the word is to describe an event
that occurred in
Prague in 1618 after a meeting of Protestant and Catholic
representatives. More recently,
it has been adopted to mean "the act of exiting a window system
to get a faster response
time." For ten points, what twelve-letter word means, "to
throw out of a window"?
Answer: _Defenestrate_ (The Defenestration of Prague)
- Physicist Murray Gell-Mann drew the name of an important
fundamental particle from the
phrase "three quarks for Muster Mark" in this book. When
asked why this book was so much
more difficult to read than its predecessor was, the author explained
that the action
takes place at night when things are more obscure, instead of in the
day. For ten points,
what book contains the longest published sentence in the English
language?
Answer: _Finnegan's Wake_ (by James Joyce)