Athletics, Mets, Cardinals, Tigers, Washington, Adams, Jefferson...

We have been playing trivia for the past few weeks and it has been lots of fun!! There is, of course, the many obscure, random and maybe even inappropriate questions. A few amazing questions that we have somehow managed to guess correctly:
1. The sitcom movie the 40-year old virgin is handed along with a box of porn to resolve his problem (Answer: Everybody Loves Raymond, Thanks to Paul).
2. The artist that proposed to talk show host Rolonda Watts in 1997. I don't know anyone who has heard of this Rolonda Watts show... (Answer: James Brown, Wild guess by Sarah and Allison).
3. The president one of the guys in Fight Club would like to take down/fight.. (Answer: Lincoln, Great guess by Gaines, Aaron and Paul based on a small hint in the exact quote that made an allusion to the fact that this president is really big... I am impressed, I did now know anything about Lincoln other than he wore a hat and a beard. For a while I thought he was contemporary with Martin Luther King and even confused the two).
4. The Bavarian doctor that in ___year did lots of research on the cerebral cortex (Answer: Alzheimer)

Then there is the, we are geeks and know what things actually should be called or look like rather than what books say:
1. When exposed to a base, litmus paper turns what color (Our Answer: Pink, expected answer Red. Every book in the world says red, but it is not freaking red, it is pink, get it right!).

And then the misses we should know:
1. The one actor from LOTR that got nominated for an Oscar (Half of us believed: The guy that plays Gandalf, the other half: The golem guy.. aparently Golem was a guy). We answered Golem, and of course it was the Gandalf guy.
2. Where some former Braves played (I tried to answer this and failed to guess ANY of them). We only live in the city owned by Turner.

In general lots of fun. Lots of learning too. I am now off to go home to get ready for the next go at it tonight, hopefully we can improve our performance.

Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Jetson, Flintstone, Huxtable, Turner, Jackson, Missipi, Maine,...

Not everything is as it seems

This is a cool example of how perspective can affect what you see if you are standing in the right place:
Right Place
Wrong Place

For those that think the earth is round, you should see what it could look like if it was really flat and our satellites just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

This is wayyy cool!!! I say we try it out!! Any takers? We need someone that can draw and someone that knows how to do sidewalk chalk and someone that knows about perspective... because as for us, 3-D effects come in PCI and AGP flavors.

Shoelaces vs. Velcro

A long time ago, Patricia and I had an interesting argument - "Are shoelaces more dangerous than velcro?" Like most of our "arguments," neither of us really cared, and were merely using the argument to justify another decision - namely, whether I should be allowed to wear velcro shoes or not. I like velcro shoes - they are convenient, easy-to-wear, look nice, and make a neat sound when you undo them. Plus you don't get "untied" easily, and have to deal with bending down to tie them (as well as strangers telling you "hey - your shoe is untied" - even though technically, it is the shoeLACE that is untied - how do you tie a shoe?). You can even change the style of how you wear them (hmmm... shall I keep the straps straight or cross them today?)

Patricia, on the other hand hates velcro shoes. She thinks they look hideous and unprofessional, and should only be worn by children (who can't tie their shoes) and the elderly (who can appreciate the convenience even more).

So, of course, I "justified" my wearing velcro shoes (for the record, I don't wear velcro shoes anymore) by saying that shoelaces are dangerous - they can be used to strangle people; they can trip someone at the worst possible moment, sending them to their death over a cliff or by getting hit by a car. (Nevermind that shoelaces are also dirtier than velcro, as anyone who has visited a men's restroom with untied shoes will note.)

Patricia, of course, joined in on the argument, saying that velcro was more dangerous. Like many of our "disputes" we "solved" it with a google search. Of the two phrases "velcro death" and "shoelace death", whichever received more hits on google would be the more dangerous. (Of course, this method of solving our argument is not logical or accurate, but neither of us cared - it is enough to decide how to determine a winner of the argument. Heck, I'm sure we would even go for coin flipping on some of our "arguments.")

The results? The phrase "velcro death" received many more hits, and thus velcro was deemed more dangerous. (Apparently, velcro death was the name of a band.) Today, the phrase STILL gets more hits, although I don't see any mention of the band in the 1st 20 results. People just have a fascination with the word velcro and the word death, I guess - because none of the results seem to actually be a death caused by velcro.

Anyway, today I found a patent for a shoelace warning system. Now, I ask you (the reader), would you need a warning system for velcro being "untied"? I think not! Hence, velcro must be superior to shoelaces! =)

Note: This is the part where some geeky reader decides to search the patent office for patents involving velcro, and links to them in the comments... :-P