The Mark Discordia Singles Tournament
Playoff
Round 9
Question
Set 12: 20 tossups plus tiebreaker
Editing and non-science questions by Matt Weiner
Science by Anthony de Jesus, the Washington University Academic Team,
and Matt Weiner
1. His philosophy of governance was often summarized as "a dog with a bone neither barks nor bites." Winning election on the Plan of Tuxtepec, he left the presidency in 1880 under a constitutional provision barring consecutive terms. In 1884, he returned to office and had the constitution amended, remaining in power until his 1910 overthrow by Francisco Madera. FTP, name this longtime president of Mexico.
ANSWER: Jos� de la Cruz Porfirio D�az
2. For a random variable with this discrete distribution,
the expected value is the mean. It has the properties that there are a fixed
number of trials that either succeed or fail and that the trials are identical
and independent. The general formula for the density for a variable with this
distribution is n choose x times p to the x time one minus p to the n minus x.
FTP, name this distribution which, as the number of trials goes to infinity,
becomes the normal distribution.
ANSWER: binomial distribution
3. Coorong and Brookfield parks are in its basin. It passes through Lake Alexandrina, and its banks contain the cities of Mildurra, Loxton, and Albury as well as Mount Kosciusko. It receives the Murrumbidgee and Darling and divides New South Wales from Victoria. FTP, identify this Australian river.
ANSWER: Murray River
4. Possibly
the only historically based poem to contain the phrase �bake their hedgehogs,�
it promises that �You may perceive, if you have lucky eyes/Something that ran
away from being wise.� Dwelling on the departure of a train and a courthouse
speech, it was published in 1928, sixty-nine years after the events described.
FTP, name this Stephen Vincent Ben�t poem titled for the remains of a militant
abolitionist.
ANSWER: �John Brown�s Body�
5. Irving Fisher outlined this concept while elaborating on
Simon Newcomb�s work. The fact that it is constant in the long run explains why
an increase in the money supply causes inflation in the monetarist view. In the
monetarist equation of exchange, it is multipled by the money supply to equal
the price level times the volume of production. FTP, give this term denoting
the number of times a given dollar is spent in a particular period of time,
represented by the letter V.
ANSWER: velocity
of money
6. Originally
inhabited by the San, who left for the north and west, it was organized in the
nineteenth century by King Moshoeshoe. It became a British protectorate in 1868
and gained independence in 1966, under the leadership of Moshoeshoe II and
Prime Minister Joseph Jonathan. Opposition leader Ntsu Mokhehle and King Letsie
III now rule the country. FTP, name this African nation, formerly known as
Basutoland and located entirely within South Africa, with capital at Maseru.
ANSWER: Kingdom of Lesotho [prompt on Basutoland before it is mentioned]
7. Her suitor
offers to �play along with the charade� and complains of feeling dirty when she
starts �talkin� cute� with a certain other male. �Lookin� in the mirror all the
time� and being funny and �cool with the lines� don�t seem to attract her, even
if such actions are �the way love�s supposed to be.� We learn that her
significant other is a friend to the narrator in the first line, so �the point
is probably moot.� FTP, name this title female of a Rick Springfield hit.
ANSWER: �Jessie�s Girl�
8. One advantage of it over the PC X server is that the
viewer doesn�t save state information: if your local system crashes, no
information will be lost. It is also platform-independent, bandwidth-friendly,
and open-source, but since it doesn�t link directly to the graphics card, it
often has trouble redrawing fast-changing images on the client side.� FTP name this remote display system
developed by ATT&T Laboratories Cambridge which allows you to view a remote
desktop environment.
ANSWER: Virtual Network Computing
9. According to this, the product of the wave functions of
the electronic state, the vibrational state, and a particular set of rotational
quantum numbers JM gives the wave function for a molecule. It allows the
selection of a simpler electronic Schr�dinger equation for fixed internuclear
distances. It holds that nuclei can be considered stationary relative to
electrons because of their greater mass. FTP, name this approximation named
after two scientists.
ANSWER: Born-Oppenheimer approximation
10. In one of this author�s stories, a fired servant catches
an old woman stealing hair from corpses in order to make a wig. After the woman
protests that there is nothing wrong with stealing from the immoral, the
servant agrees and steals the woman�s clothes. In another, the Grand Magistrate
questions four contradictory witnesses to a possible rape and murder by the
bandit Tajomaru. FTP, name this author of �In a Grove� and �Rashomon.�
ANSWER: Akutagawa Ryūnosuke
11. It was the event celebrated in the medieval Feast of the
Dormition and is now commemorated by Catholics on a namesake August 15 holiday.
Belief in it was made compulsory by the 1950 encyclical Munificentissimus
Deus and confirmed by the second Vatican council. It is said to have
occurred at either Ephesus or Jerusalem between three and fifteen years after
the Crucifixion. FTP, identify this doctrine which states that Mary�s body was
taken into heaven.
ANSWER: the Assumption of Mary [accept equivalents
which contain the word Assumption]
12. Its Madelung constant is 1.7476. Sometimes named for
sodium chloride, which typifies it, for that compound, each sodium ion is
attracted by six nearby chlorides. The most efficient arrangement of atoms in a
crystal lattice, it has an atomic packing factor of 0.74. FTP, name this
lattice which has more atoms per unit volume than a body-centered cubic
crystal.
ANSWER: face-centered cubic
lattice
13. Her notable individual works include Pro-War Parade and A Young Man in Curlers at Home on West Twentieth Street, New York City. Shortly before her suicide, she completed a set of photographs of mentally retarded middle-aged individuals. Her Child With Toy Hand Grenade was ironically shot some time before Norman Mailer likened her possession of a camera to a child�s possession of a grenade. FTP, identify this photographer, known for her depictions of social outsiders.
ANSWER: Dianne Arbus
14. It acquired its current name in 1942 when John
Bracken became its leader. Its current chairman was famously insulted as �Joe
who?� when he first occupied the office; Joe Clark again runs the party, which
has been supplanted as the leading right-wing group by the National Alliance.
FTP, name this party which has only twelve seats left in Parliament, a decline
from the 1984 to 1993 period when members Brian Mulroney and Kim Campbell
served as Canadian Prime Ministers.
ANSWER: Progressive Conservative Party
of Canada [prompt on Tories; prompt on Conservatives]
15. The protagonist�s close friend ends up in
a monastery in Africa, and that friend�s father is given last rites by Father
Mackay. The spouses of Rex Mottram and Celia Mulcaster have an affair, which is
ended when one party relapses into Catholicism. Samgrass is charged with
watching over Sebastian Marchmain even before the latter�s arrest. FTP, name
the novel in which such events occur, whose main character is the painter
Charles Ryder, written by Evelyn Waugh.
ANSWER: Brideshead Revisited
16. A rope and a
few tattered remains of a sail at the base of a broken mast are the only
objects visible on the boat with the white hull. There is only one living human
in this painting, but the blood in the shark-infested water suggests that there
once were more on the boat. FTP, identify this painting by Winslow Homer, named
after an oceanographic phenomenon.
ANSWER: Gulf
Stream
17. The
major thoroughfares in this city are the Eixo Monumental and Eixo Rodoviario.
The Liberty Panteon and Planalto Palace are located at the Square of the Three
Powers, beside which is the Espa�o Lucio Costa, containing a scale model of the
city. Laid out according to the �Plano Piloto,� its housing was oriented into
apartment buildings known as �superquadras.� FTP, name this city, designed by
Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer to replace Rio de Janeiro as the capital of
Brazil.
ANSWER: Brasilia
18. The Council of Acre was held during it to redirect efforts from Edessa to Damascus. Bereft of the anti-Jewish pogroms that usually accompanied the start of similar events, it was led by Conrad III of Germany and Louis VII of France. Declared by Pope Eugenius III and popularized by Bernard of Clairvaux, it was essentially ended at the Battle of Hattin due to the military tactics of Saladin. FTP, identify this unsuccessful crusade, taking place in 1147 and 1148.
ANSWER: Second Crusade
19. They include �On the Bridge� based on text by Schulze,
�The Blinde Knave� after Cibber, and �The Rose,� after Schlegel. The most
famous ones might be �Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel� after Goethe and �To
Sylvia� after Shakespeare. FTP, identify the form of such works by the composer
of the Trout Quintet and a certain Unfinished Symphony, German
for �songs�
ANSWER: Franz Schubert's lieder [prompt on songs
before it is mentioned]
20. After the title object is used to catch Mr. Osborn of
apartment 16C beating his wife, one user concludes �Life is too terrible, too
sordid and awful.� We learn also of the Fullers� cocktail party and the
engagement of Sweeney�s nurse, but the hypocrisy of the chief female character
in the story is sealed when that woman�s history of stealing jewels is
mentioned. The trouble began when Jim Wescott had the title object fixed, and
Irene began to hear the voices of neighbors. FTP, name this short story by John
Cheever.
ANSWER: �The Enormous Radio�
Tiebreaker:
His acquaintances included Edward Covey, Sophia Auld, and
his two wives, Anna Murray and Helen Pitts. At an 1852 address in Rochester, he
attacked the hypocrisy of the Fourth of July, and in the same year he was the
vice-presidential candidate of the Liberty Party. Near the end of his life, he
became U.S. Marshall and Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia and
minister to Haiti. FTP, name this editor of the North Star, an escaped
slave who became a leading abolitionist orator.
ANSWER: Frederick Douglass [accept Frederick
Augustus Washington Bailey]