January 30, 2009 question

AAA has been around since 1902. Yeah, it was probably needed most critically when automobiles were still heavily outnumbered by horse-drawn carriages. Charles came closest with his guess of 1914, and although it's 12 years off, he still could have gotten a membership at a really good introductory rate at that time. Way to go, Charles!

Speaking of close, how about that Illinois Senate vote, huh? Seeing as though they're usually split down the middle on cut-and-dry topics like the bill to legalize bribes applied to the senatorial profit sharing plan, the 59-0 vote to axe Rod was a little overwhelming. Don't worry about Blago, though, he'll be back on his feet soon enough. Word is he's slated to sub for Elisabeth Hasselbeck during her maternity leave from The View.

Now, here's a question about this important political topic:

In what year did The View premiere on ABC?

January 29, 2009 question

Okay, so I eased up on you with the American Automobile Association, but the trivia pedal is gonna hit the trivia metal today. Here's the question:

In what year was the American Automobile Association formed?

And here's who knew better than to succumb to the non-trick trick question:

Heidi
Steven F (the F stands for Ford Anglia)
Gopal
H. E. (the H E stands for Hudson Essex)
Diannalee
Nancy K (the K stands for K-Car)
Lee
Mike K (the K stands for Kei Car)
Frislem
Karen M (the M stands for My Father's Oldsmobile)
Steve J (the J stands for Jag-You-Are)
Heidi

Vroom.

--  Adam Kellogg adam@adamkellogg.com 219.762.9396 

January 28, 2009 question

WAGDA is A) Washington State Geospatial Data Archive, as three of you knew: Karen M (the M stands for Geographic Information Systems Expert), Karen H (the H stands for Holistic Surveyor), and Heidi. What you may not know is that all of the selections were moderate variations of real acronyms:

WAGD: Waste Anesthetic Gas Disposal
WAGER: Weekly Addiction Gaming Education Report
WAGES: Women's Action to Gain Economic Security
WAGE: World Affairs and the Global Economy

So don't worry, you weren't fooled by my creativity. You were fooled by the avalanche of available acronyms (AAA). Hmm . . . that probably won't stick either, will it? Here's today's question:

What does the acronym AAA* (The Triple-A Membership that offers roadside assistance, maps, travel discounts, and much more) stand for?

It should be noted that this particular acronym holds upwards of 150 legitimate meanings, but I think you know the one I'm talking about.

January 27, 2008 question

I would have asked you which states have never produced a Miss America, but since there are 21 of them (including the Virgin Islands, who have only been competing for four years now) the big winners California, Ohio, and Oklahoma stepped into the trivial spotlight. Nancy K (the K stands for Kansas) was the only one to correctly name two.

Hmm . . . I guess there's a reason they pulled this show off network TV, because anything not known by this group of trivia seekers isn't really worth knowing. Well . . . you know.

Right now I'm just excited about the recent study showing that it would take 1,000 years to reverse the global warming trend, even if we reduced our CO2 emissions to zero. Of course, that would require us all to stop breathing, so . . . I'm going to go ahead and keep driving my car, thank you very much. Can we stop putting "green" on the labels of every product imaginable now? I'm ready to go out and buy a bottle of "We're All Gonna Die Anyway" turbo-charged, industrial strength, lead-based laundry detergent. Okay, here's today's question:

The existence of what organization (WAGDA) will likely prevent me from patenting the initials of my new brand, We're All Gonna Die Anyway?

A) Washington State Geospatial Data Archive
B) Waste Anesthetic Gas Disposal Aggregate
C) Weekly Addiction Gaming Designers Association
D) Women's Action to Gain Diversified Advancement
E) World Affairs & Global Development Alliance

January 26, 2008 question

Britney has about 90 million Web sites calling her name, but Barack Obama is in the 110 million stratosphere. Interestingly enough, there is trivial controversy over which number is more disturbing. I won't try to settle it, since disturbance and controversy are always welcome here.

I will move on to the best news of the weekend, that Miss Indiana is now, for the first time ever, Miss America. (Also, the Miss America Pageant happened . . . who knew?) As a lifelong Hoosier, I'm proud that the leading propagator of world peace is finally from the finest state in the Union. To celebrate, here's more Miss America trivia for you in today's question:

Representatives from what three states have won the Miss America pageant six times each, tied for the most for any state?

Also, big sparkling tiaras to all who knew last Friday's question:

Paul C (the C stands for Connecticut)
Charles
Kyle
Steve J (the J stands for Jersey)

January 23, 2009 question

Here are the five previous husband-wife tandems to earn best acting Oscar nods in the same year:

Alfred Lunt & Lynn Fontanne (both for The Guardsman in 1932)
Charles Laughton & Elsa Lanchester (both for Witness for the Prosecution in 1957)
Richard Burton & Elizabeth Taylor (both for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf in 1966)
Frank Sinatra (From Here to Eternity) and Ava Gardner (Mogambo) in 1953
Rex Harrison (Cleopatra) and Rachel Roberts (This Sporting Life) in 1963

Somehow Emma Thompson & Kenneth Branagh, Nicole Kidman & Tom Cruise, and Paul Newman & Joanne Woodward managed to stagger their nominations. But here's who knew Burton & Taylor: Charles, Elena, Gopal, Heather M (the M stands for Married Or Not, Brangelina Must Not Take Home the Gold), Karen M (the M stands for Marriage Never In Question For Liz), Nancy K (the K stands for Knight Should Have Been Nominated For Best Picture).

And here's today's question:

Whose name yields more Google results: Britney Spears or Barack Obama?

January 22, 2009 question

Cordelia is one of the moons of Uranus. You all guessed either Saturn or Jupiter and totally forgot about Uranus.

Oh come on. Like you didn't start thinking up jokes the second you saw what the answer was. But let's turn our minds to higher, more noble, more edifying subjects . . . like Oscar nominations. Unfortunately, Heath Ledger's Best Supporting bid is the only big nomination for The Dark Knight. I haven't checked the rules, but apparently my watching a film completely excludes any movie from Best Picture contention. (My condolences go out to Speed Racer and his family.)

However, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were both nominated in the Best Actor/Actress in a Lead Role categories*, because the voters of the Academy didn't think the rest of the world was quite jealous enough. Here's today's question:

Aside from Pitt and Jolie, name one of the five other married couples who received acting nominations in the same year.**



*How enlightened is it to segregate the actor and actress awards? Why are the men competing against the men and the women against the women? Is there a different range of difficulty or something? Just wondering.

**Okay, I admit, that's really not a question. It's more of a command, which seems kind of rude, I guess. "Name one. Now!" You don't have to if you don't want to. I'm sure you understand.

January 21, 2009 question

There are 8 B vitamins, and former VP Dick Cheney has a deficiency of whichever ones prevent you from hurting your back and/or looking like a villain out of a Capra and/or Kubrick movie. To be classified as a vitamin, a compound must be A) organic, B) required by the human body, and C) impossible for the human body to synthesize and therefore supplied by the diet. (By that rationale, I do believe chocolate and caffeine are vitamins, but I'll have to talk to the FDA about that.) Some of the previous B vitamins have been determined to be unvitaminesque. That's why there are only 8, even though there's a B-12. Charles and Karen H (the H stands for Holy Riboflavin, Batman) both knew and will be inaugurated as the leaders of the trivia world in ceremonies beginning shortly.

But here's today's question:

Cordelia is one of at least 22 moons orbiting what planet?

January 19, 2009 question

Somewhere, Ricardo Montalban is sitting in a chair upholstered in the softest Corinthian leather. He was a good guy. He and his wife Georgiana were married 63 years before she died in 2007, which has to be some kind of Hollywood record. I will forever remember him as Khan, the most un-Montalbanian role he ever played. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was the first movie I ever saw in the theater, and he scared the Villechaize out of me.

Here's to you, Ricardo, or should I say, "Khaaaaaaaaan!" And here's today's question, which has nothing to do with you whatsoever:

How many B vitamins are there?

Oh, and before trivia got snowed in on Friday, no one knew that an intelligencer is both a reporter (C) and a spy (D), so the answer was O. S was a little too popular. Happy Monday.

January 15, 2009 question

Pepto Bismal, in all its shocking pink glory, is just a little bit radioactive. Some, cough-cough, Robbie, cough-cough, believe it is the secret behind Pink's super powers. Bismuth, found in Pepto's Bismuth Subsalicylate, is a radioactive element, although it has a half life of like 50 bajillion years. So it's stable.

But it's still Pepto Bismal. Here's who knew the answer was yes:

Paul C (the C stands for Chalky Taste)
Steve T (the T stands for Trace Amounts Of Lead Should Protect You)
Heather M (the M stands for Maalox Has It, Too)
Charles
Karen H (the H stands for Harghxlshj . . . Um, Could You Pass The Peptol?)
Robbie
Steve J (the J stands for Juicy)
Cindy

Ah . . . I feel better already. Here's today's question:

What is an intelligencer? (Let's go multiple choice to make it easier.)

A) A Chronicle
B) An Instructor
C) A Reporter
D) A Spy
E) An Unbiased Observer
F) All of the Above
G) None of the Above
H) A and B
I) A and C
J) A and D
K) A and E
L) B and C
M) B and D
N) B and E
O) C and D
P) C and E
Q) D and E
R) F and G
S) I hate you, Adam.

January 14, 2009 question

The Wall-Street all-stars after the Enron meltdown in 2001 were none other than the bad boys of Enron. The blessings they bestowed upon the California energy landscape have since been passed on to the entire gas-guzzling community. If you want to get irritated, as Heather M (the M stands for Make Mine A Double), Steve T (the T stands for Tap's Open), Trevor, Karen H (the H stands for Hold The Barbecue And The Chicken On That Jack Daniel's Barbecue Chicken), and Karen M (the M stands for Maybe I Should Drive) probably were when they recalled the answer on Monday, check out this quote from former Enron exec Kenneth Lay, before he was convicted of being Lex Luthor:

"The broader goal of [Krugman's] latest attack on Enron appears to be to discredit the free-market system, a system that entrusts people to make choices and enjoy the fruits of their labor, skill, intellect and heart. He would apparently rely on a system of monopolies controlled or sponsored by government to make choices for people. We disagree, finding ourselves less trusting of the integrity and good faith of such institutions and their leaders.

"The example Mr. Krugman cites of 'financialization' run amok (the electricity market in California) is the product of exactly his kind of system, with active government intervention at every step. Indeed, the only winners in the California fiasco were the government-owned utilities of Los Angeles, the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia. The disaster that squandered the wealth of California was born of regulation by the few, not by markets of the many."

The tactics in question boiled down to a bit of legislation that allowed Enron to inflate prices of everything under the shroud of what became known as Investor-Satan privilege, a law that expressly forbids the government from investigating the terms of any agreements between futures & commodity traders and the Lord of Darkness.

Can you tell the frigid snow storm is making me irritable? Here's today's question:

True or False (see, I'm feeling irritable, but generous): Pepto-Bismal contains a radioactive ingredient.

January 9, 2009 answer

Mega kudos to Steve T (the T stands for Three) who knew that 3 of the 11 BCS National Champions (including this year's Gators and last year's Tigers) got to play the championship game in their home state. Two teams have actually lost the title game in a home atmosphere. The BCS is just fair all around. Way to go, Steve!

January 12, 2009 question

Yes, it did take me nine days to realize this was 2009. So sue me.

I caught the opening story on 60 Minutes last night about the true reason behind the sudden jump (and subsequent crash) in the price of gasoline at the pump. It was a real good story, but allow me to oversimplify it for us all.

Think of oil as Miley Cyrus concert tickets. Think of the oil companies as TicketMaster. The report alleged that concert venues are getting bigger, there are more dates on the tour schedule, and interest in Miley Cyrus is waning slightly. But there are these people called commodity traders (aka ticket scalpers) who don't even like Hannah Montana, but they still buy up all the tickets they can for the entire tour. They have a real good feeling that Miley's minions will pay a lot more than what TicketMaster is charging, and they're right. But fans can't buy Hannah Montana tickets from the scalpers . . . no, the scalpers have no intention of selling to actual consumers. They don't even want the smell of Hannah Montana tickets on their hands. Instead, they sell the tickets to actual ticketing agents, who then dispense the tickets to the real fans at about 4 times the face value. TicketMaster does pretty well (especially since they realize they can increase their prices now that the scalpers have driven up the market price. Miley Cyrus ain't hurting. The smaller ticketing agents barely make a living. The people who make the most money are the scalpers . . . yeah, the one's who add exactly zero point zero, zero to the well being of the world. And it's all perfectly legal. Yummy.

It's ridiculous, whether you're talking about oil, gas, or actual concert tickets. The answer to today's question is the real kicker, though. Here it is:

According to the story on 60 Minutes, investors from what company became the most sought-after recruits on Wall Street as 2001 came to a close?

January 9, 2009 question

Mah-Jongg is a trademarked name that has no direct Chinese translation. I would have accepted "trick question," or "I hate you, Adam," as well. It was a transliteration of the Cantonese name for the game, Mahjek, which means "sparrow," as several people guessed. Since the game was patented in 1923, the popularity of the new made-up name became so popular that it infiltrated Chinese folklore to the point that many people believe Confucius invented it. Saying the game was created by Joseph P. Babcock just doesn't sell tiles.

Nobody knew, but now we all do. Except for the people who are so convinced by the generational lies that they will email me back and argue about it. Fun! :) Here's today's question:

Of the 11 BCS national championship games*, how many have been played in the home state of the winning team?

*That's college football, if you were wondering. You know who you are**.

**I will not accept an answer of "I hate you, Adam," for today's question.

January 8, 2008 question

Only Kyle knew that the frog with the really long name is the only known species of frogs to not have any lungs. Some salamanders are lungless, along with another legless amphibian. Just to keep things straight. Kyle does have lungs. And he did know the answer. No idea whether the frog knows he doesn't have lungs.

Okay, time for an even harder one . . . or is it? Here's today's question:

What is the literal Chinese translation of "Mah-Jongg," the popular tile game of luck and strategy?

January 6, 2008 question

It's a new year, and I'd like to tell you I've resolved to being more consistent with trivia than I was last year . . . but seeing as we're six days in and you're only just now receiving your first question of 09, maybe we'll hold off on any predictions. Then again, waiting this long for trivia isn't that much worse than waiting until January 8 to play the last college bowl game.

When I left you last year, we were collectively wondering what the other half of fat free half & half is. Karen M (the M stands for Moo Point) knew that the mystery ingredient is almost always corn syrup. Corn syrup, cream, what's the difference? Way to know what you aren't putting in your body, Karen! On to today's question. Here it is:

The Barbourula kalimantanensis is the only known species of frog that has no . . . what?