VETO XII: 17 July 2010
Questions by Zarya Cynader and Rebecca Cynader

BONUSES

1. Answer some questions about a Canadian author and his work for the stated number of points.

[10] The 1996 mockumentary based on this novel focusses on the tension between aging punk rockers Joe Dick and Billy Tallent, played by Hugh Dillon and Callum Keith Rennie respectively. Largely filmed in familiar Vancouver locations including the Commodore Ballroom, it is routinely included on lists of the greatest Canadian films.
ANSWER: Hard Core Logo
 
[10] Bruce McDonald, who adapted Hard Core Logo for the screen, also directed a dramatization of the author's novel American Whiskey Bar. In 2005 he announced a film based upon this 1999 novel, which follows an unnamed narrator, his Super 8 videocamera, and his best friend Nettie as they navigate sex, love, and the seedy underbelly of Kerrisdale.
ANSWER: The Pornographer's Poem

[10] This Vancouver-based author and musician wrote Hard Core LogoAmerican Whiskey Bar and The Pornographer's Poem.
ANSWER: Michael Turner

2. Way way back in the 1980s, secret government employees dug up famous guys and ladies and made amusing genetic copies. Answer some questions about them for the stated number of points.

[5] This is the premise of what animated TV series, as sung over its opening credits?
ANSWER: Clone High

[10] In the series' sixth episode, Joan of Arc dons a fake moustache in order to play on the Clone High basketball team, which has a "no girls or animals" policy. Similarly impersonating Henry VIII is one of these mammals, which appear in all but one episode of the show.
ANSWER: dolphins

[15] In "Sleep of Faith: La Rue D'Awakening", it is indicated that Mr. Butlertron's rivalry with Scangrade dates back to their undergraduate days. What college in Massachusetts did the feuding robots attend?
ANSWER: Amherst College


3. Answer some questions about (legal) ways to acquire someone else's property, for the stated number of points.

[5] Probably the best-known method of seizing property, this phrase commonly refers to the right of government, particularly in the US and Canada, to expropriate land for public use or public safety reasons.
ANSWER: eminent domain

[10] Under this doctrine, an individual may acquire property in another's land by demonstrating a sufficiently long period of "open and notorious" use contrary to the true owner's purposes.
ANSWER: adverse possession

[15] Under the law of feudal tenure, the property rights of a fief-holder who died intestate or committed a felony (other than treason) reverted to the feudal lord through a process given this name. While it has been abolished in most common law jurisdictions, it can still occur, under certain circumstances, in England and Wales.
ANSWER: escheat


4. Answer some questions about a Canadian music award for ten points each.

[10] Established in 2006, this annual award for the best Canadian full-length album includes a $20,000 cash prize and is sponsored in part by Sirius Satellite Radio. 
ANSWER: Polaris Music Prize

[10] This Toronto-based artist won the inaugural Polaris prize for He Poos Clouds, the second of two full-length releases under a previous name. He now records under his own name, and his third full-length, Heartland, is among the nominees for the 2010 Polaris Prize.
ANSWER: Owen Pallett

[5,5] Owen Pallett's Heartland is one of ten albums shortlisted for the 2010 prize. Identify any two of the other nine artists represented on the shortlist for five points each.
ANSWERS: The Besnard LakesBroken Social SceneCaribouKarkwaDan ManganRadio RadioThe SadiesShadTegan and Sara


5. What's the difference between an auto mechanic and a quantum mechanic? The quantum mechanic can get his car into the garage without opening the door. For ten points each:

[10] This system, the quantum-mechanical analogue of the system described in classical mechanics by Hooke's Law, is a useful first approximation to the solution of the Schrodinger equation for a diatomic molecule. 
ANSWER: quantum harmonic oscillator [PROMPT on "harmonic oscillator", but do NOT accept or prompt on "simple harmonic oscillator"]

[10] This potential is a simple refinement of the quantum harmonic oscillator, its asymmetry reflecting the difference between compressing and stretching a chemical bond, and its unequally-spaced energy levels reflecting the contribution of anharmonicity. 
ANSWER: Morse potential

[10] This more accurate model includes a term for the Pauli repulsion energy, treated as the inverse twelfth power of the interatomic distance, and one for the attractive van der Waals forces, as the inverse sixth power of the same.
ANSWER: Lennard-Jones potential


6. For ten points, give the ancient city from its modern name. Five points if you need a hint about the ancient city.

[10] Santorini, Greece

[5] This island in the Cyclades is now believed by some scholars to be the origin of the Atlantis myth.

ANSWER: Thera

[10] Sart, Turkey

[5] This city was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia.

ANSWER: Sardis [accept Sardes]

[10] Izmir, Turkey

[5] The name of this city, situated on the Aegean coast of Anatolia, is also an ancient Greek word for myrrh.

ANSWER: Smyrna


7. Tudor politics: not actually as sexy as you think! Answer some questions about it anyway. For ten points each:

[10] Variously described as the son of a blacksmith, a brewer, or a sheep farmer, this courtier to Henry VIII and eventual Master of the Rolls, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Chief Secretary, and Lord Privy Seal was born in Putney around 1485.
ANSWER: Thomas Cromwell

[10] Cromwell was granted this noble title in April 1540, but forfeited it upon his execution two months later. A subsequent creation by Elizabeth I passed to Robert Devereux, stepson of her favourite Robert Dudley; Devereux also forfeited the title upon his execution for treason in 1601.
ANSWER: Earl of Essex

[10] Named for the country seat of the Seymour family, Hilary Mantel's award-winning 2009 novel chronicles Cromwell's rise to power in the years following Cardinal Wolsey's disgrace. A planned sequel, tentatively entitled The Mirror and the Light, will cover the period from 1535 until Cromwell's execution.
ANSWER: Wolf Hall


8. Sets and groups, for ten points each.

[10] All or nothing: a relation R on a set S is an equivalence relation if and only if, for all x, y and z in S, R possesses these three properties.
ANSWERS: reflexivitytransitivity, and symmetry [accept other word forms, e.g. "reflexive", "transitive", "symmetric"]

[10] A Rubik's cube is a group of this kind, whose elements are bijections of a set S to itself and whose group operation is the composition of those bijections.
ANSWER: permutation group

[5,5] Like all groups, a permutation group must satisfy four elementary conditions. Give any two of them for five points each.
ANSWERS: closedassociative; existence of an identity element; existence of a unique inverse element for each element [be generous in accepting equivalents, other word forms, etc.]


9. Answer some questions about a recent US military-political scandal, for ten points each.

[10] This four-star general stepped down as Commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan and leader of the International Security Assistance Force on June 23rd, 2010, following a controversy over comments about Vice President Joe Biden and other senior White House officials.
ANSWER: Gen. Stanley Allen McChrystal

[10] The controversy which led to Gen. McChrystal's resignation stemmed from comments attributed to him and his aides in an article entitled "The Runaway General", which appeared in this magazine.
ANSWER: Rolling Stone

[10] Gen. McChrystal has been replaced in his Afghan command by this former Commanding General, Multi-National Force Iraq, who was reassigned from his position as Commander, U.S. Central Command, assuming his new role on July 4th.
ANSWER: Gen. David Howell Petraeus


10. Answer questions about some not-quite-states, 5-10-15.

[5] Boundaries vary, but most if not all proposals for the secession of this entity would incorporate substantial portions of British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon; some include parts of Alaska, Idaho, Montana, California, Alberta and the Yukon. 
ANSWER: Cascadia

[10] This polity declared its intention to secede from North Carolina in 1784, and in 1785, seven states voted to admit it to the union -- a simple majority, but not the required two-thirds. Its government had collapsed entirely by 1790, and its territory today forms the easternmost portion of the state of Tennessee.
ANSWER: Franklin or Frankland [accept "Territory of," "State of", etc.]

[15] This short-lived "Republic" declared independence in 1827, but was never formally recognized, and ceased to exist after the Webster-Ashburton Treaty clarified the border in 1842. Its name persists in the name of the county commonly known as the New Brunswick Panhandle, a tributary of the Saint John River which flows through the county, and a town in Aroostook County, Maine, near the rivers' confluence.
ANSWER: Republic of Madawaska


11. [MODERATOR: Distribute visual bonus sheet.] Visual bonus! For ten points each, identify the naval battle from maps of the action. You have fifteen seconds.

ANSWERS: #1: Battle of Trafalgar; #2: Battle of Leyte Gulf; #3: Battle of Hampton Roads


12. More than a dozen cultivars of the cruciferous vegetable species Brassica oleracea are produced and consumed by humans; though sharing high levels of fibre, Vitamin C and various nutrients, these cultivars display a far greater morphological diversity than is normally associated with members of the same species. For five points each, identify any six vegetables which are cultivars of B. oleracea. You have fifteen seconds.

[5 each] ANSWERS: broccoflowerbroccolibroccolinibrussels sproutscabbagecauliflowergai lan [accept "kai lan", "Chinese broccoli", "Chinese kale"]; collard greens [accept "collards"]kalekohlrabired cabbageRomanesco broccoli [accept "Roman cauliflower"]; spring greenswild cabbage [DO NOT accept Chinese cabbage, Napa cabbage or bok choy, which are cultivars of B. rapa]


13. Answer some questions about a region in Central Asia, for ten points each.

[10] China's largest and northwesternmost administrative division, this region contains vast oil and natural gas reserves and borders nearly every other country in Central Asia, giving it great strategic importance. It also contains the point on Earth which is furthest from any ocean, located about 320 km north of the region's capital at Ürümqi.
ANSWER: Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region or Xinjiang Province [accept Sinkiang]

[10] Located on the border between Xinjiang and Pakistan, this peak is sometimes called the "Savage Mountain" due to the extreme difficulty and high mortality rate involved in climbing it. It was first summited by an Italian team in 1954, making it the fourth of the "eight-thousanders" to be successfully climbed.
ANSWER: K2

[10] Xinjiang is bisected by the Tian Shan mountain range, south of which lies this large and rapidly-expanding desert. The discovery of 4,000-year-old mummies near the now-buried city of Loulan attest to the region's long history of occupation, and oasis towns such as Kashgar and Dunhuang served as crucial waypoints along the Silk Road.
ANSWER: Taklamakan Desert


14. The fifth installation in this series is slated for North American release on September 21st, 2010. For ten points each, answer the following about a long-running game franchise.

[10] The fourth incarnation of this series included a new "religion" structure, voiceover content by Leonard Nimoy, and the ability to build new "Wonders" including The Internet (symbolized by an Al Gore icon). The fifth version will feature a shift from square to hexagonal tiles and new playable factions including the Iroquois and the Songhai.
ANSWER: Civilization [accept "Sid Meier's Civilization"]

[10] This sequel, released in 1999 and quickly followed by the Alien Crossfire expansion pack, picks up where Civilization's "space race" victory condition leaves off, chronicling mankind's attempts to colonize an alien world.
ANSWER: Alpha Centauri [accept "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri"]

[10] The Civilization franchise, like Alpha CentauriColonization, Gettysburg!Antietam!, and Pirates!, is marketed under the name of this game designer, a native of Sarnia, Ontario.
ANSWER: Sidney K. Meier


15. Byzantine women, for ten points each.

[10] Despite her common birth and early career as an actress and courtesan, she came to exercise unparalleled power as consort and political ally of Justinian I, who overturned a substantial body of law in order to marry her.
ANSWER: Empress Theodora

[10] Noted for her role in ending the "First Iconoclasm", this woman served as regent during the minority of her son, Constantine VI; as he matured and began to pose a threat to her rule, she ordered him captured and his eyes gouged out, and after he died from his wounds, had herself crowned emperor. She ruled for five years before being unseated and exiled.
ANSWER: Empress Irene of Athens (accept Irene Sarantapechaina)

[10] This 12th-century princess completed the Alexiad, a chronicle of her father's reign, which saw a substantial restoration of the Empire's fortunes and the establishment of an important army, both of whom bear their family name.
ANSWER: Anna Komnene or Anna Komnena


16. Identify some Faulkner novels from characters, for ten points each.

[10] Cash, Darl, and Dewey Dell Bundren, Vernon Tull and Reverend Whitfield are among this novel's fifteen narrators. 
ANSWER: As I Lay Dying

[10] The first section of this 1929 novel is notoriously challenging, being narrated by Benjy Compson, who suffers from severe mental disabilities. His brothers Quentin and Jason narrate the second and third portions of the novel, respectively.
ANSWER: The Sound and the Fury

[10] Joanna Burden, Byron Bunch, Reverend Gail Hightower and Joe Christmas feature prominently in this work's exploration of events surrounding Lena Grove's pregnancy.
ANSWER: Light in August


17. Answer some questions about the Christian Apocrypha, for ten points each.

[10] Although frequently published in conjunction with non-canonical texts in a single gathering of "Apocrypha", these books of the "second canon" are considered by most Catholic and Orthodox Christians to be a part of the canonical Old Testament, despite not appearing in the Hebrew Torah.
ANSWER: deuterocanonical books

[10] The stories of Bel and the Dragon and of Susanna and the Elders, and the Song of the Three Children, appear in the Septuagint and the Vulgate, but not in the original Hebrew/Aramaic text of this book, which also features the interpretation of several dreams and some mysterious writing.
ANSWER: Book of Daniel

[5,5] Several texts now considered canonical books of the New Testament were not widely accepted by early Christians, and their inclusion in the canon remained controversial even through the Reformation. Martin Luther was particularly skeptical of four New Testament books, which are still placed last in modern-day German Lutheran Bibles. Identify any two of these four books for five points each. 
ANSWERS: Book of James; Book of Jude; Epistle to the HebrewsRevelation of St John the Divine [or Apocalypse of John, or Revelation of John, or Revelation of the Theologian, or Book of Revelation, or similar equivalents]


18. Answer some questions related to a certain place for ten points each.

[10] This first novel by Canadian playwright Ann-Marie MacDonald follows the lives of the four Piper sisters -- Kathleen, Mercedes, Frances and Lily -- through the first half of the twentieth century, as boom and bust see a new town grow up around their once-remote house on the "Shore Road".
ANSWER: Fall on Your Knees

[10] Set in the same town as Fall on Your Knees, and featuring Nicholas Campbell, Mary Walsh, Brat Packer Andrew McCarthy (of Sixteen Candles fame) and a cameo by Ashley MacIsaac, this 1999 film stars Liane Balaban as a fifteen-year-old who resorts to desperate measures to escape her provincial life.
ANSWER: New Waterford Girl

[10] New Waterford, like Glace Bay, Port Hawkesbury, and Sydney, is located on this Canadian island.
ANSWER: Cape Breton Island


19. Identify some extraterrestrial features with mythical names, for ten points each.

[10] At roughly three times the height of Everest, this Martian mountain is the highest in the solar system. Studies to detect the presence of Greek gods have been inconclusive.
ANSWER: Olympus Mons

[10] We're reasonably sure this region on Venus wasn't named for the staggeringly bad 1987 film starring Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman.
ANSWER: Ishtar Terra

[10] This bright region on Saturn's moon Titan, probably comprised of highly reflective ice fields, borders a dark region called Shangri-la, and shares its name with Charles Foster Kane's mansion in Citizen Kane.
ANSWER: Xanadu (accept Xanadu Regio) 


20. Given the name of a recently deceased president, identify the current president for 15 points each. If you need the country, you'll get 5.

[15] Umaru Musa Yar'Adua

[5] Nigeria

ANSWER: Goodluck Ebele Jonathan

[15] Lech Kaczyński

[5] Poland

ANSWER: Bronisław Maria Komorowski


21. A disenchanted woman struggles with changes to her lifestyle after marrying beneath her social class.

[5] Name the 1890 play by Henrik Ibsen.
ANSWER: Hedda Gabler

[10] Name Hedda¹s husband, the cuckolded academic.
ANSWER: George Tesman or Jørgen Tesman [accept first or last name]

[15] What heart-broken character from Hedda Gabler fills the blank in the title of Scottish band Broken Records' 2009 song: "If ___ Wrote a Song, it Would Sound Like This"?
ANSWER: Eilert Løvborg


22. Everyone's favourite kind of organic chemistry: the kind with funny names. Identify some molecules from descriptions for ten points each.

[10] This simple heteroaromatic compound features a pnictogen in a five-membered ring, and is named by analogy to its lighter congeners, pyrrole and phosphole.
ANSWER: 
arsole

[10] This reagent is best known for its application in the Mitsunobu reaction, where it undergoes attack by triphenylphosphine to form a zwitterion and ultimately a phosphonium species, which is then attacked by an alcohol, ultimately yielding an SN2-type substitution. Its stabler diisopropyl analogue is often substituted for this toxic and potentially-explosive compound.
ANSWER: 
DEAD or diethyl azodicarboxylate

[10] A triterpene sourced from certain species of mistletoe and sumac, derivatives of this organic acid demonstrate potent antiviral activity, particularly against HIV. Apparently not quite as foolish and dull as the Attic Greeks might have thought!
ANSWER: 
moronic acid