Season 4 - Final Set Flashcards
An eruption of a volcano on which Greek island in around 1600 BCE caused the
destruction of the Minoan town of Akrotiri (which should not be confused with the
present-day territory of that name on Cyprus)?
Santorini or Thera
The species sometimes called the Malagasy otter shrew is a web-footed member of
which family of mammals? This is a morphologically diverse group, with different
members resembling various unrelated species found elsewhere through convergent
evolution.
tenrec or Tenrecidae
In poetry, what term is used to describe the running on of a thought from one line to
another without final punctuation? An example from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is:
“April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory
and desire, stirring”.
Enjambment
Which chieftain of the Arverni tribe united the Gauls against Julius Caesar, leading
them to victory at the Battle of Gergovia? He later surrendered to Caesar at the Battle
of Alesia.
Vercingetorix
A student called Shigekuni Honda is the central character in Haru no Yuki (Spring Snow), which ends with the death of Honda’s schoolmate, Kiyoaki [KEE-OH-ACK-EE]. It is the
first novel in which tetralogy by Yukio Mishima in which Honda grows up and grows
old while repeatedly meeting people he believes to be successive reincarnations of
Kiyoaki [KEE-OH-ACK-EE]?
The Sea of Fertility or Hōjō no Umi
First identified by Alan Turing in 1936, what problem in theoretical computer science
asks whether it is possible to determine, for all possible inputs, whether a computer
program will stop executing or run indefinitely?
Halting problem
The American critical theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick is perhaps best remembered for
her 1990 book analysing ‘The Epistemology’ of… what?
The Closet
Which Dutch jurist and humanist, author of Mare Liberum (The Free Seas), was
incarcerated in Loevestein [LOOV-a-STINE] Castle in 1618, soon after the outbreak of
the Thirty Years’ War, upon being sentenced to life imprisonment by order of Prince
Maurice of Nassau? He and his wife escaped three years later by hiding in a chest of
books transported out of the castle.
Hugo Grotius or Hugo de Groot or Huig de Groot
Once home to the largest city in pre-Columbian South America, which archaeological site near Trujillo [TROO-HEE-YOH] in Peru, once the capital of the Chimor, has been listed as ‘World Heritage in Danger’ since 1986, primarily because of the damage
caused to its adobe buildings by natural erosion?
Chan Chan
Erwin Panofsky wrote that which 15th-century Netherlandish painter popularised the
subject of Saint Jerome removing a thorn from a lion’s paw with his work Saint Jerome
and the Lion? He also helped popularise the “swoon of the Virgin” with his panel
painting The Descent from the Cross, now housed in the Prado.
Rogier van der Weyden or Roger de la Pasture
Its seat standing on Mount Carmel in Haifa, the Universal House of Justice is the ninemember ruling supreme body of which religion founded in the 19th century?
Baháʼí
Which short story by Katharine Mansfield, the title story in a well-known collection,
sees Laura Sheridan’s elderly neighbour die while she is overseeing preparations for a
social gathering? It shares its name with the English title of a play by Václav Havel in
which Hugo Pludek becomes part of a bureaucracy when Mr Kalabis is away attending
the title event.
The Garden Party (accept Zahradní slavnost or The Garden Party and Other
Stories)
Which loose grouping of several types of relatively weak electrostatic forces
between neutral atoms or molecules is named after a scientist who also gives his name to an ‘equation of state’?
Van der Waals forces
Which chieftain of the Cherusci [CHE-RUSKEE] tribe defeated Publius Quinctilius Varus
at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest? He was assassinated by other Germanic nobles in 21
CE.
Arminius
After escaping from Loevestein [LOOV-a-STINE] Castle, Grotius fled to France, where
he wrote perhaps his best-known work, De jure belli ac pacis (On the Law of War and
Peace), in 1625, which he dedicated to which monarch, who had awarded him an
annual pension? Despite his strict Catholic upbringing, this monarch’s rivalry with the
Habsburgs led him to side against the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand II, during the
Thirty Years’ War.
Louis XIII [thirteenth]
Pedro Santana was the first leader of which country after it declared independence
from its neighbour in 1844? He later re-integrated this country into the Spanish Empire and died in its Restoration War.
Dominican Republic
The 946 CE eruption of which volcano resulted in significant climate change in nearby Manchuria? This eruption resulted in the formation of Heaven Lake, the highest caldera lake in the world, on the border between China and North Korea.
Paektu (or Baekdu or Changbai)
The Baháʼí Faith was founded by the Persian aristocrat Mírzá Ḥusayn-ʻAlí Núrí, who
took which Arabic title meaning “Glory of God”?
Baháʼu’lláh [Ba-ha-ul-LAH]
Which American jazz composer and trumpeter was awarded the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his jazz oratorio Blood on the Fields? This was the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to a jazz composition, and this man remains the only musician to win a Grammy for both Jazz and Classical awards in the same year.
Wynton Marsalis
Caravaggio’s painting Saint Jerome Writing has sometimes been attributed to which
Spanish painter who worked in Naples for much of his life? Along with Francisco de
Zurburán, he is one of the best-known Spanish tenebrists [TENNA-BRISTS], and his
output includes many paintings of Jerome as well as The Clubfoot and Magdalena
Ventura with Her Husband and Son, also known as The Bearded Lady.
Jusepe de Ribera
Golden-crowned and silky are among the species of what group of lemurs, related to
the indri [IN-dree]? These lemurs use a form of arboreal locomotion known as vertical
clinging and leaping, which is also used by bushbabies, tarsiers, and marmosets.
sifaka or Propithecus
In modern poetry, what term from Latin is used to describe a complete pause or break
within a line, often marked by punctuation? An example from W.B. Yeats’ The Lake Isle
of Innisfree is: “I hear lake water lapping || with low sounds by the shore…”
Caesura
The consumptive Buddhist monk Mizoguchi is the central character in which Yukio
Mishima novel which ends with Mizoguchi choosing not to kill himself after destroying
the title structure?
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion or Kinkaku-ji
The halting problem is the best-known example of which class of problems that in
principle have a yes or no answer but which are impossible to solve in general on a
given machine?
undecidable problem (or non-computable; accept undecidability)
