VETO 2007, FARSIDE second packet tossups
TOSSUP 1
In 2004, the International Automobile Federation awarded him the first World
Prize for Road Safety, Environment and Mobility, after he was given credit for
a twenty-per-cent drop in traffic deaths in his country. In his first
year in office, he had earned the less admirable honour of an Ig Nobel Prize
for Peace, for commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima with atomic
bomb tests in the Pacific, but in 2007, surveys of his countrymen showed he was
most appreciated for staying out of the Iraq war. For 10 points, name this
just-retired president of France.
Answer: Jacques Rene CHIRAC
TOSSUP 2
The Indian version of them, described in the Nyaya Sutra, has five
parts, where the third part, the udaharana, must include an example.
In the thirteenth century, William of Shyreswood wrote the first known list of
mnemonics for them including Festino, Baroco, Celarent, and Barbara, with
different vowels for "some", "all", "no", and "some not",
in the twenty-four valid moods.
First described in the Prior Analytics of Aristotle,
for 10 points, what are
these logical arguments with a conclusion following from two premises?
Answer: SYLLOGISMs (accept AVAYAVA)
TOSSUP 3
Big Island and Bigsby Island are the two biggest of its more than
fourteen thousand islands.
Jutting into it from the east is the Aulneau Peninsula.
It is fed in the south, at Wheelers Point, by the
Rainy River, and empties at its northern end at Rat Portage Bay into
the Winnipeg River at the city of Kenora. For 10 points, name this
lake that washes Minnesota's Northwest Angle as well as Ontario and
Manitoba.
Answer: LAKE OF THE WOODS
TOSSUP 4
A single pill of ivermectin gives a year's protection from this
disease, and in 1988, Merck began offering the drug for free. An
internationally sponsored campaign to eradicate it had begun in 1974
with a focus on eliminating its vector, the black fly, through aerial
spraying over affected areas of West Africa. Success has been such
that farmers have now been reclaiming twenty-five million hectares of
abandoned fertile land around inland waterways.
For 10 points, what is this disease that
is caused by worms getting into the eyes?
Answer: African RIVER BLINDNESS or
ONCHOCERCIASIS
TOSSUP 5
No one seems to care that his bike was stolen. He's somehow even less popular
than he was in high school, and he supports the troops he didn't go to high
school with. He is well-versed in first thirds of great literature, but he
only reads books about movies, TV, music. He is unafraid to try new snacks.
From Iowa City; Jefferson or Kirksville or Kansas City, Missouri; Glendale,
Arizona; or Huntsville, Alabama; for 10 points, give the label assigned to an
adult male regional resident in these headlines from the Onion.
Answer: AREA MAN
TOSSUP 6
This city was the location of a treaty in the year 921 between kings
Henry the First and Charles the Simple of Eastern and Western Francia.
From 1265 to 1794 it was the residence of the Electors of Cologne, the
last of whom, Maximilian Franz, founded the spa quarter of Bad
Godesberg and was the patron of Ludwig van Beethoven, who was born
here. After it became part of Prussia in 1815, King Frederick Wilhelm
established a university here, but for 10 points, what city became
most prominent after World War Two as capital of West Germany?
Answer: BONN, Germany
TOSSUP 7
"Tell us that God is a great big shot and that we're paid to trust
him." "Tell us again about Freedom and Democracy", it implores,
mentioning Westminster and Washington, Wall Street and Watts. It
claims that with teargas words and nightstick words we were born to
understand the universal language. Written by Mich�le Lalonde, for 10
points, what is this bilingual poetic rant with a title taken from an
anglophone insult to French Canadians?
Answer: SPEAK WHITE
TOSSUP 8
Both of the main operations involve raising a number to a fixed power and
then finding the remainder upon division by the same composite number,
n, which is the product of two large primes.
The two fixed powers are multiplicative inverses modulo the totient
function of n.
One of the powers is kept secret, while
n and the other power are made public.
First published in
1977 and patented by MIT, for 10 points, what is this system of
encryption and decryption named with three professors' initials?
Answer: RSA algorithm or cryptosystem
(for Rivest, Shamir, Adleman)
TOSSUP 9
In 1933 he finished his M.A. in sociology with a thesis entitled "The
Problems of the Subnormal Family", in which he advocated that
"subnormal" families be moved to segregated colonies and that "the
mentally defective" be sterilized. But unlike George Hoadley and John
Brownlee in a neighboring province, he didn't implement these ideas
once he had the power to do so. Instead he set up mental health
clinics and free psychiatric hospital treatment in Saskatchewan. For
10 points name this "father of Medicare".
Answer: Thomas Clement DOUGLAS
TOSSUP 10
They were named after their founder, the son of an officer in the
Khazar army. The founder's grandson, Toghrul, became their first
Sultan and defeated Mas'ud I of the Ghaznavids and then in 1055 freed
the Abbasid caliph when capturing Baghdad. In 1071, Toghrul's
successor Alp Arslan won the battle of Manzikert against the Byzantine
Empire and took over Anatolia. Eventually succumbing to infighting
and Assassins in the twelfth century, for 10 points, name this
pre-Ottoman Turkish dynasty.
Answer: SELJUK dynasty
TOSSUP 11
Citizens of this country who have strictly observed the laws for seventy-three
moons receive a pension and the title of "Legal". When there are vacancies in
high office, five or six candidates dance on a suspended rope, and whoever
jumps the highest wins the job. The major dispute is over interpreting the
Blundecral's statement, "all true believers break their eggs at the convenient
end", and Big-Endian heretics have found refuge in the rival court of Blefuscu.
For 10 points, name this land of five-inch-tall people in Gulliver's
Travels.
Answer: LILLIPUT
TOSSUP 12
It was given by the Byzantine emperor Phocas to Pope Boniface the
Fourth, who consecrated it in 609 as the Church of Saint Mary and the
martyrs. A bronze sculpture of the Battle of the Titans no
longer sits above the pediment, which bears an inscription saying
it was built during the third consulate of Marcus Agrippa. Until the
twentieth century it was the world's largest concrete structure. It has
no windows but a light-admitting oculus at the apex of its
hemispherical dome. For 10 points, name this temple to the seven gods
in Rome.
Answer: PANTHEON
TOSSUP 13
Seventy-two centimetres long and decorated with cloud motifs on red
lacquer, this aluminimum item was designed by the Lenovo Creative
Centre. Able to withstand winds of sixty-five kilometres per
hour and rains of fifty millimetres per hour, it will be taken
to the peak of Mount Everest in May of 2008 in the middle of a
five-continent journey including every province of China.
For 10 points, what is this
object that on August 8, 2008, will make a ceremonial entry into Beijing?
Answer: the OLYMPIC TORCH
TOSSUP 14
After Fred Sheppard got ten years for a conviction on this crime in P.E.I. in
2000, popular outrage over the short sentence led to the commissioning of a
federal- provincial- territorial report on sentencing guidelines, which noted
that the median sentence given to men for this offence was only five years. In
Sheppard's case, the fact that he was too intoxicated to form intent led to a
reduction in charge from second-degree murder. For 10 points, name this crime
defined as culpable homicide that is not murder or infanticide.
Answer: MANSLAUGHTER
TOSSUP 15
In 2005, a blue one and a red one became the twelfth and thirteenth to
be discovered. The unusual colour of the blue one indicates it's made
up mostly of submicron-sized material, probably dust particles from
Mab, which shares its orbit. In 1986, Voyager 2 had found two of
them, and also found that the
brightest one, epsilon, sits between orbits of Ophelia and Cordelia. The
first nine were found in 1977, but for 10 points, what thin planetary
features were also recorded, long thought erroneously, in 1797 by
William Herschel?
Answer: RINGS around/of URANUS
TOSSUP 16
The Mouse Woman is tucked away at the back. The Wolf chews the wing
of the Eagle, who attacks the paws of the Bear, who is looking
backward from the front. The Frog is half in and half out, but the
centre of the piece is the cloak-wearing shaman, who holds a staff
carved with a Sea-Bear, Killer Whale, and Raven. The two castings are
a black one at the Canadian embassy in Washington, and a jade-coloured
one at Vancouver airport. For 10 points name this dugout
sculpture by Bill Reid.
Answer: SPIRIT OF HAIDA GWAII (prompt on the
JADE CANOE or the BLACK CANOE)
TOSSUP 17
According to Google Maps, doing this takes twenty-nine days. In 1995,
Frenchman Guy Delage claimed to have done it in fifty-five days, but this is
doubted because he had no witnesses, and no effective way to avoid
sharks. The only generally recognized accomplishing of this act was
in 1998 by Delage's compatriot and anti-cancer fund-raiser
Benoit Lecomte, who arrived at Quiberon after 72 days. For 10 points, what is
this
accomplishment that Google Maps suggests can be done averaging eight kilometres
per hour to Le Havre from Boston?
Answer: SWIM across the ATLANTIC Ocean
TOSSUP 18
This term originated as the name of a copper-silver coin minted in
1635 in Savoy-Piedmont. Later it came to mean a half Spanish real
["ray-AL"], which until the mid-nineteenth century was used as legal
coinage in the southern United States and valued at one sixteenth of a
dollar. This was also the initial price in 1837 of a newspaper that
took that name, despite its everyday meaning of "something trivial".
For 10 points, what newspaper merged in 1914 with the New Orleans
Times?
Answer: PICAYUNE
TOSSUP 19
Jason and Medea ["med-EH-a"] visit her to be purified for the slaying
of Apsyrtus. This sister of the Cretan queen Pasipha� and daughter of
Helios and the ocean nymph Perse lives in a forest in a stone house
surrounded by wolves and lions that wag their tails on another
occasion when visitors approach, and she takes a break from weaving to
invite them to a feast. Thanks to the herb moly from Hermes, Odysseus
does not succumb, but for 10 points, what sorceress on the Island of
the Dawn turns half of Odysseus's men into swine?
Answer: CIRCE
TOSSUP 20
In 2006 he became the token member of Asian ancestry in a multicultural
townhouse
with a Peruvian immigrant,
a woman of Austrian descent, and a citizen of France.
After they all moved earlier this year into more spacious
digs on Acacia Avenue, he has kept a blog -- but neither confirmed nor denied
rumours about its authenticity -- on the
website not-a-leader-dot-C-A, which is registered to the
Conservative Party of Canada. For 10 points, name this Siberian husky
companion of Janine Krieber and Jeanne and St�phane Dion.
Answer: KYOTO
TOSSUP 21
He claims that if he "had lived a normal life" he "might have become
another Schopenhauer or Dostoyevsky". Instead, at age forty-seven
he's still living with his mother. After Helena arrives, his attempts
to seduce her are failures, as are both of his attempts to shoot her
husband, a newly retired "miserable gout-ridden professor" and
brother-in-law who suggests the idea of selling the estate that this
character has been managing together with his niece Sonya. For 10 points,
name this title character of a drama by Chekhov.
Answer: UNCLE VANYA (or DYADYA VANYA)
TOSSUP 22
This area is abundant with wild watermelon, which is believed to
have originated here. Other endemic plants include the camelthorn
tree and the natural appetite suppressant the Hoodia cactus. Known
for its reddish sand, its only year-round river is the Okavango in the
northwest. The natural habitat of the meerkat, for 10 points, name
this arid region stretching over most of Botswana and parts of Namibia
and South Africa.
Answer: KALAHARI Desert or Basin
TOSSUP 23
It uses all the Roman letters except F, J, W, and Z, although the "Z"
sound is represented by the letter D, and the English "D" sound is
represented by a separate consonant written as D with a horizontal
stroke through it. There are six additional vowels, written as "A"
with a breve, "A" and "E" and "O" with circumflexes, and "O" and "U"
with hooks on the top right. What's more, all vowels can have any of
five other markings to indicate non-level tone. For 10 points name
this Jesuit creation used by eighty million people in southeast Asia.
Answer: VIETNAMESE alphabet, or Chu QUOC NGU
TOSSUP 24
In mammals, it is formed from the metabolism of
lysine ["LIE-seen"] with alpha-ketoglutarate, or
from the metabolism of lipids in the fatty acid spiral.
It is also made in the inner membrane of mitochondria
["my-toe-CON-dree-a"] as a product of
oxidative carboxylation ["car-box-ill-EH-shun"]
of pyruvate ["pie-ROO-vate"].
For 10 points, name this thioester ["THIGH-o-ester"]
that reacts with oxaloacetate
["ox-al-o-ASS-it-ate"] to form citrate at the beginning of the citric
acid cycle.
Answer: ACETYL CO-A, or ACETYL COENZYME A
Vancouver Estival Trivia Open, 2007, FARSIDE team, second packet