It Was Banned in New York City from 1940 Until 1976, When Roger Sharpe Successfully Called

HARVARD FALL TOURNAMENT ROUND FIVE

TOSSUPS

1. These were upheld in a 1942 Supreme Court case, Ex parte Quirin, which involved eight Nazi saboteurs caught in the United States by the FBI, six of whom were later executed. Johnson v. Eisentrager upheld these bodies outside of American territory in 1950. In a more famous case, one of these sentenced a Confederate sympathizer from Indiana to death; in the ensuing case, the Supreme Court ruled that these could not be used in states that had upheld the Constitution. In a recent case, John Paul Stevens drew a distinction between these bodies and courts-martial and argued that these violate the Geneva Conventions, at least as currently set up in Guantánamo Bay. FTP, identify these inquisitorial judicial bodies at the center of 2006’s Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and 1866’s Ex parte Milligan.

ANSWER: military tribunals (accept military commissions or military courts)

2. The crescentic kind of this feature is the most common on earth, and the longest crescentic ones, at three kilometers in length, are found in the Taklimakan region. The linear type, however, can reach 160 kilometers and are often formed in areas where winds blow regularly from two directions. If the wind blows from many directions, it can produce the radially symmetric star variety of this feature, which is often associated with the Namib. The parabolic type generally form in coastal deserts as well. FTP, identify this term for a desert feature shaped by wind that piles up sand.

ANSWER: sand dunes

3. He was called a “transmitter who invented nothing” and he taught that “what you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” He was compared to Socrates by the philosopher Fung Yu-lan, and his ideas laid the foundation for the Ru school of thought, which was more commonly known as the School of the Literati. A native of the state of Lu during the Spring and Autumn Period, he is best known by Matteo Ricci’s Latinized version of his name. He believed that people should strive to become junzi, extolled the value of ren, and taught, among others, Xunzi and Mencius. FTP, identify this advocate of “filial piety,” whose lessons are recorded in the Analects.

ANSWER: Confucius (accept Kong Fu-zi)

4. Dardanus came from Samothrace to found it. Dardanus’s kingdom was then inherited by his grandson Tros and then by his son Ilus, who built this city but who called it Ilium. Laomedon was king when Poseidon and Apollo came to construct its walls, but Laomedon was killed when Heracles conquered it. Another famous resident was Helenus the seer, who was tortured into divulging the information that only if Neoptolemus came to fight, the Palladium were stolen, and Heracles’s arrows were used would this city fall. It was in front of this city that Aias carried off the body of Achilles after the latter was slain by Paris. FTP, identify this city conquered after a famous incident with a wooden horse.

ANSWER: Troy (accept Troas before “this city”; accept Ilium before it is mentioned)

5. So great was his attention to detail that the text of a book is enlarged behind a man’s glasses in the Madonna van der Paele. He did not use linear perspective, but gave a convincing optical approximation, particularly in his Rolin Madonna. He carved his motto, “As I Can,” into the frame of Man With a Red Turban, which is probably the first signed, dated self-portrait in Western art. Skilled as he was, he considered his brother Hubert his superior. FTP, name this artist, whom Vasari attributed with the invention of oil paints, creator of the Ghent Altarpiece.

ANSWER: Jan van Eyck (prompt on van Eyck) 6. Jean-Jacques Rousseau declared in The Social Contract that this was the only place in western Europe still capable of legislating against government corruption. One of the poorest areas of Europe, Rousseau nevertheless presaged that it would “astonish Europe.” At that time, the patriot Pasquale Paoli was beginning his struggle to liberate it from Genoa. Seven years later, its most famous citizen was born in the capital of Ajaccio. Separated from the European mainland by the Ligurian Sea, this is, FTP, what Mediterranean island, the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte, which is today a part of France?

ANSWER: Corsica (accept Corse)

7. Raising the complex number one plus i to the eighth power may done using the binomial theorem, but the computation is somewhat tedious. It is more efficient to put the number into polar form and apply deMoivre’s theorem. Noting that 1+i may be written in polar form with r equals the square root of two and theta equals pi/4, what is one plus i to the eighth, in Cartesian coordinates?

ANSWER: 16 NOTE: Sqrt(2)^8*e^(8*pi*i/4)

8. Agnes de Mille received twenty-two curtain calls after playing the lead in its premiere, and it was originally called Four Dance Episodes. The first three – Buckaroo Holiday, Corral Nocturne, and Saturday Night Waltz – are relatively obscure, while the final piece, which was inspired by the American folk song “Bonaparte’s Retreat,” is more famous. The dance in that final section was inspired by one derived from African-American folk celebrations similar to a jig or a reel, but we usually associate it with a square dance. Famous because of its inclusion in the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association commercial reminding you “what’s for dinner,” that piece, “Hoe-Down,” is the most famous excerpt from, FTP, what ballet by Aaron Copland with a title that alludes to a gathering of cowboys?

ANSWER: Rodeo (accept Four Dance Episodes before it is given)

9. The presidential campaign of this year began with dissention among more Victor Berger and radicals in the Socialist Party who supported the International Workers of the World, though Eugene V. Debs did win the nomination for the party’s presidential candidate. Less than a week before the election, the Republican Party suffered a loss when James S. Sherman, the sitting vice president and the incumbent’s running mate, died in office. Hiram Warren Johnson received 88 electoral votes for vice president after his running mate – a third party candidate – won Washington, California, and four Midwestern States. With only 42% of the popular vote, however, the Democratic candidate was able to win by a landslide in the Electoral College. FTP, identify the year of the election that saw both William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt defeated by Woodrow Wilson.

ANSWER: 1912

10. Its “G” form is administered perenterally, while its “V” form is orally active. It was accidentally discovered in 1928 in a culture dish of Staphylococcus bacteria, and, while the results of this finding were published a year later in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology, it was not until the work of scientists such as Ernst Chain that a stable source of the chemical could be mass produced. Today, it is known that this drug kills Gram-positive bacteria by weakening the cell wall and thus causing the bacterium to break apart. FTP, name this commonly used antibiotic associated with the Scottish scientist Sir Alexander Fleming.

ANSWER: penicillin (accept PCN; accept benzylpenicillin before the word “V”) 11. One group fighting for its independence was the MPLA, whose membership came largely from the Kimbundu people. The MPLA was opposed by two other groups, the FNLA and UNITA, the latter of which was centered around the Ovimbundu region. The MPLA defeated the FNLA with the help of Cuban troops flown in on Soviet planes, while the American-backed UNITA was forced to smuggle diamonds to raise funds for their guerilla war. In addition to American backing, UNITA had the active support of the South African government, had to clear a one-kilometer wide swath of land along this country’s boundary with Namibia in order to prevent insurgents from crossing the border. The civil war has now ended in, FTP, what southern African country with capital at Luanda?

ANSWER: Angola

12. The title of this book was chosen from a list of ten hurriedly suggested titles by a few of the author’s friends. This haste is surprising because the author, a literary perfectionist, spent a year drawing the plans for the abbey which forms the book’s setting. The main character’s name alludes both to a 14th-century philosopher and to an Arthur Conan Doyle work. This book explores the scholastic method and includes a discussion of the conflict between Franciscans and Dominicans. Residents of the Italian monastery believe the book’s events are signs of the second coming of Christ, but the protagonist uses deductive reasoning to solve the murder of Adelmo of Otranto. FTP, name this murder mystery set in 1327 and featuring Friar William of Baskerville, a 1983 novel by Umberto Eco.

ANSWER: The Name of the Rose (accept Il nome della rosa)

13. They are constant to the sixth order within a Maxwell coil, and both their first and second derivatives are zero at the center of a Helmholtz coil. A series of them were used in the Stern Gerlach experiment to filter electrons by spin. In the Hall effect, they create charge separation in conductors placed within them. They are is not independent of inertial reference frame, and their gradients must always equal zero. Their strengths are often calculated using the Biot-Savart Law or Ampere’s Law. FTP, name these entities created by moving charges and often denoted by the letter B.

ANSWER: magnetic fields (accept B-fields before the last word of the question; do not prompt on magnet)

14. The three most common designations for their shapes are “expansive,” “constrictive,” or “stationary,” and examples of each are Nigeria, Japan, and the United States, respectively. The age groups are shown on the vertical scale, commonly graduated into five-year intervals with the youngest at the base. The number or percentage of males and females within each of the age groups is shown on the horizontal scale, the males lying traditionally on the left and the females on the right. Migration and the tendency of females to outlive males affect their shapes, but the most important factors are birth and death rates. FTP, what term refers to a bar graph in the form of a pyramid drawn to express the composition of a human population?

ANSWER: population pyramid (accept age-sex diagram)

15. The main character of this play has a secret love for macaroons, which she feeds to Dr. Rank, who later alerts her to his impending death of tuberculosis by sending her his card with a black cross on it. The heroine’s friend, Christine Linde, has been a widow for three years, having married for money after jilting a poorer man. The heroine’s husband calls her his “skylark” and “squirrel,” but is horrified by a letter from the blackmailer Nils Krogstad saying that his wife forged her father’s signature. Even though Krogstad eventually relents, the heroine decides to leave her self-centered husband Torvald to find out “who is right, the world or I.” FTP, identify this play centering on the marriage of Nora Helmer, a criticism of Victorian social conventions written in 1879 by Henrik Ibsen.

ANSWER: A Doll’s House (accept Et dukkehjem) 16. This state’s Republican Valley was opened up by the Burlington and Missouri River Railway in 1879, opening the way for settlement, largely by European immigrants. Claude Wheeler left this state to fight in World War I, while the Bergsons moved to Hanover in this state from Sweden, and young Emil Bergson left it for Mexico because he was tempted by a married girl. Jim Burden lived in Black Hawk in this state, where he fell in love with the daughter of the Shimerdas, immigrants from Bohemia. FTP, name this state on the Missouri River that served as the setting for One of Ours, O Pioneers!, and My Ántonia, also the home state of Willa Cather.

ANSWER: Nebraska

17. It was banned in New York City from 1940 until 1976, when Roger Sharpe successfully called the exact shot he was about to make in order to demonstrate that it was a game of skill and not a gambling device. The first to become popular was David Gottlieb’s Baffle Ball, which gave offered five balls for a penny. In the 1950s, Gottlieb’s Humpty Dumpty was the first to add the familiar combination of two mechanically controlled flippers. FTP, identify this arcade game that features a metal ball on an inclined surface under glass.

ANSWER: pinball

18. John Stevens and Frederick Catherwood rediscovered 44 of their cities in 1839. Spanish bishop Diego de Landa had taken extensive notes on them, but had also burned all but four of their manuscripts. National Geographic Magazine postulated in January 2006 that their writing system might predate that of the Zapotecs, previously believed to be the oldest in Mesoamerica. That system of writing is thus preserved almost exclusively on monuments and temples in their biggest cities, which include Palenque, Uxmal, and Copán. FTP, name this pre-Columbian people of Mesoamerica, best known for their ruins at Tikal and Chicen Itza.

ANSWER: Maya

19. Robert Robinson was the first to recognize this property, but Erich Huckel came up with his namesake rules to provide a quantum mechanical explanation for it in 1931. Huckel noted that, for a molecule to have this property, it must have a conjugated pi-system in a ring with a total number of pi electrons equal to 4n + 2 (where n is any integer), which explains why 6-electron systems like toluene have this property. The simplest example is the benzene ring, which is especially stable because its six pi electrons are distributed around the ring. FTP, identify this property that makes some ringed compounds stable, named for its tendency to be associated with compounds that smell.

ANSWER: aromaticity (accept aromatic compounds; do not accept resonance at any point in the question)

20. It was reputedly organized in the 9th century by Abu abd-Allah Muhammad el-Gahshigar. The frame story was added in the 14th century and the first modern Arabic version was published in Cairo in 1835. Its most famous English translators were Edward Lane and Richard Burton, while Frenchman Antoine Galland was the first to introduce it to Europe. FTP, name this book that achieved its modern form after Galland heard a story-teller recount the adventures of The Fisherman and the Genie, The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad, Aladdin’s Lamp, Sinbad the Sailor, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

ANSWER: The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (accept One Thousand and One Arabian Nights or The Book of One Thousand Nights and a Night or Alf Laila wa Laila) BONUSES

1. FTPE, answer the following about a linguistic topic. (10) This field is the study of human speech sounds. It examines how sounds are articulated and perceived, but not the contexts in which they are used in language. ANSWER: Phonetics (do not accept phonology) (10) This standard system of transcription uses roughly 107 symbols and 55 modifiers to represent human speech sounds. ANSWER: International Phonetic Alphabet (accept: IPA) (10) One symbol in IPA an upside-down e, which represents the unstressed mid-central vowel found at the beginning of the word “about.” ANSWER: schwa

2. FTPE, answer these questions about a famous feminist. (10) This American wrote The Feminine Mystique. ANSWER: Betty Friedan (10) Give the year in which she wrote it. ANSWER: 1963 (10) Name the Massachusetts liberal arts college from which she graduated. ANSWER: Smith College

3. FTPE, name these sports terms associated with a carmine hue. (10) In soccer, this is awarded for offenses such spitting, serious foul play, and violent conduct. ANSWER: Red Card (10) In college sports, this designation preserves eligibility for a student who attends school, but does not play. ANSWER: Red Shirt (10) This team was known as the MetroStars until March 9, 2006. ANSWER: Red Bull New York (accept New York Red Bulls)

4. FTPE, name these plays by 20th century Americans. (10) In this 1990 Pulitzer Prize winner by August Wilson, the faces of relatives are carved into the title object. The plot centers on a dispute between siblings over whether to sell it. ANSWER: The Piano Lesson (10) This play by William Inge focuses on two sisters, Madge and Millie, who feel limited by their small Kansas town, at least until the arrival of Hal. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. ANSWER: Picnic (10) In fact a trilogy of plays, this sequence by Eugene O’Neill is an update of Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy. It is set during the Civil War. ANSWER: Mourning Becomes Electra

5. FTPE, answer these questions about a famous mathematician. (10) This Hungarian had to leave his homeland to escape persecution. He never had a permanent home, but rather relied on his colleagues for lodgings. His motto is said to have been, “Another roof, another proof.” He did not concentrate on a single problem, but worked on problems in graph theory, combinatorics, number theory, set theory, and classical analysis. ANSWER: Paul Erdos (10) This book, published in 1998, details the life of Paul Erdos and discusses advanced mathematics in accessible terms. ANSWER: The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth (10) Erdos collaborated on more mathematical papers than any other mathematician, giving rise to this term. ANSWER: Erdos number

6. Losing a limb or other body part always builds character. FTPE, name these fellows who did. (10) This general lost two fingers to Russian shrapnel at the battle of Tsushima Straits, but this didn’t stop him from designing and pushing for the attack on Pearl Harbor. ANSWER: Isoroku Yamamoto (10) Claiming that a Spanish coast guard had severed his ear, this man presented the bloody appendage to the House of Commons. Walpole, though amused, had to declare war on the wayward Spanish. ANSWER: Robert Jenkins (10) During the battle of Lepanto this Spaniard lost his left hand to a Turkish fleet. To compound matters, he was captured and sold into slavery in Algiers. Nonplussed, he went on to write one of the greatest works of Spanish literature. ANSWER: Miguel de Cervantes

7. Ancient Rome produced numerous notable authors. FTPE, name a few of them, none of whom is Virgil. (10) This last of the five good emperors was noted for his philosophical Meditations. ANSWER: Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus (10) This man was the first great Roman lyrical poet and was a favorite of Augustus. He is remembered for his Odes, in which he exhorted readers to “carpe diem.” ANSWER: Quintus Horatius Flaccus (accept Horace) (10) This historian from the age of Augustus is remembered chiefly for his comprehensive Ab Urbe Condita. ANSWER: Titus Livius (accept Livy)

8. FTPE answer the following about speciation. (10) This type of speciation occurs when populations are separated by a geographic barrier such as a mountain range or desert. ANSWER: Allopatric (10) Reproductive or temporal isolation may prevent interbreeding between populations within the same habitat, producing this type of speciation. ANSWER: Sympatric (10) This effect, related to peripatric speciation, results when a small group becomes isolated from the parent population. Gene frequencies in the new population may be drastically different from those of the original. ANSWER: Founder Effect

9. FTPE, answer the following questions about the history of Paris (10) Paris was originally known by this Roman name. ANSWER: Lutetia (10) This famous cathedral was built on Paris’s Ile de la Cité in 1163 during the Capetian Dynasty. ANSWER: Paris (10) This device was erected in the Place de la Concorde in 1792. ANSWER: guillotine

10. FTPE, identify the following members of the Republican Party (10) This Massachusetts senator was caned on the floor of the Senate by Preston Brooks. ANSWER: Charles Sumner (10) This Ohio senator would have become President had Andrew Johnson been impeached. ANSWER: Benjamin Wade (10) After Abraham Lincoln, this Civil War general was the second Republican to be elected President. ANSWER: Ulysses S. Grant 11. FTPE, give the capitals of these Canadian provinces or territories (10) New Brunswick. ANSWER: Frederickton (10) Prince Edward Island ANSWER: Charlottetown (10) Nunavut ANSWER: Iqaluit

12. FTPE, name these rules from fluid dynamics, for ten points each. (10) This principle states that in a moving fluid, increasing velocity leads to decreasing pressure, and it is sometimes used to explain how an airplane wing supplies lift. ANSWER: Bernoulli’s Principle (10) According to this principle, the buoyant force on an object is equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces. ANSWER: Archimedes’s Principle (10) This principle states that if pressure is applied to a non-flowing, incompressible fluid, then the pressure is transmitted equally in all directions within the fluid. ANSWER: Pascal’s Law

13. FTPE, answer these questions about an architect. (10) Name this famous transparent dwelling in New Canaan, CT designed by an architect who later won the Pritzker prize. ANSWER: Glass House (10) Who designed Glass House? ANSWER: Philip Johnson (10) This architect of the Seagram Building was working on a similar house, the Farnsworth House, when Johnson designed Glass House. ANSWER: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

14. FTPE, given the figure from Greek myth, name his wife (10) Prometheus ANSWER : Pandora (10) Philemon ANSWER : Baucis (10) Deucalion ANSWER : Pyrrha

15. FTPE, given a piece, name its French composer (10) “Carnival of the Animals” ANSWER: Camille Saint-Saens (10) “Gymnopédies” ANSWER: Erik Satie (10) “Golliwog’s Cakewalk” ANSWER: Claude Debussy

16. FTPE answer the following about RNA: (10) This five-carbon sugar is central to RNA nucleotides. ANSWER: Ribose (10) These units, composed of RNA and ribonucleoproteins, remove introns from mRNA and ligate the exons. ANSWER: Spliceosomes (10) To protect it from cytosolic degradation, messenger RNA acquires a methyl-G cap and a “tail” of this nucleotide. ANSWER: Adenine

17. FTPE, identify the following works by Aristotle (10) Aristotle defines the important parts of tragedies in this work. ANSWER: Poetics (10) In this work dedicated to his son, Aristotle argues that eudaimona is the goal of life. ANSWER: Nichomachaean Ethics (10) The second half of Aristotle’s Ethics is this work, for which Aristotle reviewed the constitutions of 150 polities. ANSWER: Politics

18. FTPE, name these Asian writers of the 20th century. (10) This Chinese writer, now exiled in France, wrote Soul Mountain and won a Nobel Prize in 2000. ANSWER: Gao Xingjian (10) This author of The Sound of Waves and Confessions of a Mask is best known for his ritual suicide after a failed attempt to inspire a coup. ANSWER: Yukio Mishima (accept Kimitake Hiraoka) (10) This Bengali poet of Gitanjali, Gora, and Ghare-Baire won the Nobel Prize in 1913. ANSWER: Rabindranath Tagore (accept Rabindranath Thakur)

19. FTPE, answer these questions about French literature: (10) The title character of this French national epic famously blows his horn before dying at the Battle of Tours. ANSWER: The Song of Roland (accept La Chanson de Roland) (10) This editor of the Encyclopedia is also known for his 1796 novel Jacques the Fatalist and his Master. ANSWER: Denis Diderot (10) This member of the Parnassus school and author of Le bonheur and Le zenith won the first Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901. ANSWER: Réne-François-Armand Sully Prudhomme

20. FTPE identify the following George Orwell essays (10) Its five parts, which mention a burial, a gazelle, a Jewish slum, a line of old women, and a troop of Senegalese soldiers, depict how colonialism dehumanizes the native population of the titular African city. ANSWER: Marrakech (10) Set in Burma, where Orwell is a minor police officer resented by the villagers, it centers on the fate of the threatening title animal. ANSWER: Shooting an Elephant (10) This autobiographical piece includes a poem Orwell wrote shortly before the Spanish Civil War and mentions four possible answers to the title question. ANSWER: Why I Write