- In April 1996, part of this man's saga came to a close when a
U.S. court failed to award 1 billion dollars' compensation from the
auditing company Arthur Andersen to the British government in return
for subsidies to his failed business. Author of 1973's On a Clear
Day You Can See General Motors, this former GM bigwig left to
start his own company. With British help he set up his factory
outside Belfast in the late 1970's and produced 8000 cars before the
company collapsed with his arrest for cocaine trafficing in L.A. in
1983. For 10 points--name this later-acquitted designer of sports
cars with gull wing doors.
answer: John _De Lorean_
- A measure of the capability of these devices is called the
dynamic impedance: the lower the number, the better the device. These
devices are engineered to break down repeatably, and rely on tunneling
from the conduction band on the n side to the valence band on the p
side with sufficiently high negative bias. Alternatively, conduction
can occur through the avalanche of electrons which would destroy a
normal diode. For 10 points--name these diodes which conduct when a
few volts are applied in the negative direction, used to regulate
power supplies.
answer: _Zener diode_
- Invented during the reign of Constantine IV Pogonatus by a
refugee from the Arab conquest of Syria, it wrought havoc on the Arab
fleet attacking Constantinople in 673 AD and is cited as a prime
reason for the long survival of the Byzantine Empire in the face of
many enemies. For 10 points--name this evidently petroleum-based
substance which could be thrown in pots or discharged from tubes,
ignited spontaneously, and could not be extinguished with water.
answer: _Greek fire_
- It can be carried in a Lance missile or delivered by an 8-inch
howitzer, or possibly by attack aircraft, and would be highly
effective against tank and infantry formations on the battlefield
without endangering nearby cities or population centers. The blast and
heat effects of this specialized type of small thermonuclear weapon
are confined to an area of only a few hundred yards in radius but
within a somewhat larger area it throws off a massive wave of gamma
and other radiation which can penetrate armor or several feet of
earth. For 10 points--name this deadly weapon also known as the
Enhanced Radiation Warhead.
answer: _neutron bomb_
- After practicing law for a time, he entered politics as an
antislavery Jacksonian Democrat and served in the Maine state
legislature, Congress, and the Senate. In his first term as a
U.S. senator, he took an antislavery position on sectional issues and
left the Democratic Party because of its endorsement of the
Kansas-Nebraska Act. He was later elected Maine's first Republican
governor and served for one year as U.S. minister to Spain. For 10
points--name this man nominated by the Republican national convention
for vice president in the belief that as an Easterner and former
Democrat he would balance Lincoln's presidential nomination
answer: Hannibal _Hamlin_
- Its first scholarly publication in 1902 by Jean-Vincent Scheil led to
the development of a special branch of comparative jurisprudence. "If
a 'sister of a god' open a tavern, or enter a tavern to drink, then shall
this woman be burned to death," and "If a builder build a house for some
one, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built
fall in and kill its owner, then that builder shall be put to death,"
are two of the 282 judgements of what cuneiform document inscribed on
a basalt stele?
answer: Code of _Hammurabi_
- Roussillon and Artois, with a line of strongholds constituting
a formidable northern frontier, were ceded to France. The French
acquisition of Alsace and Lorraine under certain conditions was
ratified. All French conquests in Catalonia were restored to Spain,
and the Great Condé, who had been siding with the Spanish, was
pardoned. Louis XIV and the Spanish infanta Maria Teresa de Austria
were married despite her renunciation of all rights to the Spanish
crown or Spanish possessions. These were the provisions of--for 10
points--which treaty that ended the Franco-Spanish War of 1648-59?
answer: Treaty of the _Pyrenees_
- In the Late Period, this man was worshipped as the son of Ptah
and Sekhmet, as well as the patron (with Thoth) of scribes. The
Greeks identified him with Asklepios, the god of medicine. For 10
points--name this Egyptian physician, scribe, architect, and vizier of
the Third Dynasty pharoah Zoser, who conceived and built the Step
Pyramid at Sakkara.
answer: _Imhotep_
- Born in 1896, he fought in a Hussar regiment during World War I
and later joined the Red Army. He became a member of the Serapion
Brothers, a literary group whose members admired the Romanticism of
the 19th-century German writer E.T.A. Hoffmann, and in his first two
collections of poetry sought to express the sensations of the
Bolshevik Revolution. A staunch supporter of the Soviet regime, his
literary and political work earned him three Orders of Lenin, three
Stalin Prizes, and a Lenin Prize. For 10 points--name this Soviet
author of The Horde and Mead, notable for his heroic war
ballads and his denunciation of Boris Pasternak.
answer: Nikolay Semyonovich _Tikhonov_
- Divided into two groups: the alkali type, and the plagioclase type which are members of the albite-anorthite solid solution series, this mineral group is composed of aluminosilicates containing sodium, potassium or calcium. Generally light colored and glassy, the mineral is found in many igneous rocks, particularly the granites. For 10 points--name this mineral which forms about 50% of the Earth's crust.
answer: _feldspar_
- It argued that governments become corrupt because they must
provide for all of the competing ethnic groups, and members of
minority groups get in the government with corrupt propaganda. The
reason the US and Canada did so much better than Latin America was
because the white settlers did not readily interbreed with the natives
and slaves. The Second Reich collapsed because the Jewish people had
no sense of national pride. These ideas come from--for 10
points--what two-volume book whose title translates as My
Struggle?
answer: _Mein Kampf_
- They don't smoke marijuana. They don't make a party out of
loving. They won't be seen wearing beads and Roman sandals. They
still wave Old Glory at the courthouse. They don't burn their draft
cards on Main Street. For 10 points--these statements are true of
what type of person, according to a song by Merle Haggard?
answer: _Okie(s) from Muskogee_
- His policies include making time spent in the bathroom vacation time, covering complainers with sand, and advocating squinting as help for people with poor eyesight. He created a new dress code designed to make people go insane, and likes to play around with people before downsizing them. For 10 points--who is this creature, the evil director of human resources in a Scott Adams comic strip?
answer: _Catbert_, Evil HR Director
- This law can be utilized in both
criminal and civil cases. In cases such as Northeast Women's
Center v. McMonagle and Waldenbooks v. American Family
Association it has been used against anti-abortion and
anti-pornography protesters, and a federal judge recently ruled that
the Los Angeles Police Department could be sued under its provisions.
Under the law, at least two counts of a variety of crimes--including
murder, kidnapping, extortion, bribery, drug dealing, counterfeiting,
or fraud--must be proved in order to establish a pattern of activity.
For 10 points--name this 1970 act whose acronym may have been inspired
by the name of the gangster in the movie Little Caesar.
answer: _RICO_ or _Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations_ Act
- Also known as anthonomus grandis, this insect of the family Curculionidae grows to an average of about 6-mm including the long, curved snout, which is about one-half the body length. The light yellow color of the post-larval stage adult changes to gray or black within several weeks. It entered the United States from Mexico in the 1890s and eventually convinced many American farmers that they should diversify away from a single crop. For 10 points--name this pest which annually destroys 3 to 5 million bales of cotton in North America.
answer: _boll weevil_
- After being out of the international scene for two years suffering from the Epstein Barr virus, she raced again in 1999 in preparation for the Sydney Olympics. A two-time world champion and three-time olympic gold medalist, she actually preceded Michael Johnson in winning the 200 and 400 meter sprint double at Atlanta. The Sydney Games were not hers though, belonging instead to her fiercest rival Cathy Freeman. For 10 points--name this French sprinter who mysteriously left the games without stepping foot on the track.
answer: Marie-Jose _Perec_
- Its 17th-century publicists, most notably Thomas Mun in England, Jean-Baptiste Colbert in France, and Antonio Serra in Italy, never used the term themselves. It called for a large population, for sumptuary laws to discourage luxuries and encourage thrift, for more exports than imports, and for colonial possessions to serve as markets for exports and suppliers of raw materials. For 10 points--give this term coined by Adam Smith, the economic counterpart of political absolutism.
answer: _mercantilism_ or _mercantile system_
- Kicked out of law school in 1974 for his anti-communist stance, he nevertheless became a law professor and expert in constitutional law. In 1989 he founded the Democratic party in his country, which he leads to this day. He became an unlikely hero for his country, somehow uniting a coalition of all the major opposition parties, becoming president and vowing to "make peace with Europe and the world". For 10 points--name the new president of Yugoslavia, replacing Slobodan Milosevic.
answer: Vojislav _Kostunica_
- First "discovered" in 1939 by Louis Caldor, her work was soon exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in a show of contemporary unknown painters. Her work is acclaimed for its purity of color and attention to detail, but is admired for its underlying naivety in its depiction of rural American life. For 10 points--name the painter of works such as Out for the Christmas Trees and The Old Oaken Bucket who turned to painting only when arthritis made needlework too painful.
answer: Grandma (Anna Mary Robertson) _Moses_
- Within a decade he had revealed more than 100 covert operations and betrayed at least 30 agents, ten of which were later executed by the Soviets, including Dmitri Polyakov, the top informer inside Soviet military intelligence. Along with his co-conspirator and wife Rosario, he was paid over $2.7 million for his spycraft before he was arrested in 1994. For 10 points--name this head of the CIA's Soviet counterintelligence unit, probably the most damaging turncoat in CIA history.
answer: Aldrich _Ames_