Useless Trivia - 1st one to answer gets to ask

Superman? His vision went all the way through UV into X-ray... and he had that heat-vision, so that's probably infrared, even though it's more like reverse-IR.

 

Superman?! Well, yes, but I was thinking of something far less mythical. Without the blue undies.

 

Superman's undies (the visible part around his butt) were RED.

So it must be Superman.

Unless you consider those his shorts.

 

Hyo - how about a hint?

 

Heavens to murgatroyd, I got the colour of Superman's undies wrong. Maybe I was thinking of the tights.

A clue, Moxie? Already?

This otherwise unremarkable and relatively common creature is known for its colour.

 

lineage?

probably insect, bacteria, microbe or very small pseudo-animal.

what can we rule out?

 

All those things you just mentioned, plus anything else on land or in the air. That should about give it away.

 

Goldfish?

 

Goldfish it is! We have a winner! :clap2:
Phew, that was harder than I thought it would be.

 

Edit ***
Ooops, I was typing away and didn't see the above announcement.
so disregard the rest.


No, I think the answer is squid (in addition to humans).
Lots of animals see in UV or IR. The rub is trying to find one with such a broad
range of vision that it will encompass both. The even greater problem is determining
what an animal can see (since they can't tell you and you can't base it solely on physiology).
Animal psychophysics is difficult work and doesn't cover a very wide range of species (we're
still working out what a horse can see, and nobody really knows for sure what cats can see).

So with the above considerations, I think bees would qualify, but their IR spectrum is only
barely into the IR range (near-IR) and I don't think that's what you had in mind. So a better
guess is the squid. Yes to UV (like most fish), probably yes to IR (cause they go deep like
crabs which do have IR), and yes yes to well-studied (probably one of the best studied
animal eyes around).


So my guess is squid.
(Aside from humans of course, which can see both IR and UV with the appropriate equipment).

 

Lol. 43 pages and countless questions, hints and guesses later, and I finally, uh, nail one.

So here's a question I previously asked and then disappeared (just like Argentina or Pinochet's Chile or Bush's World!):

The product name "Velcro" was created by the inventor of Velcro by combining which two words or phrases?

(NB: samiam previously answered this in a PM, so he's forbidden from publicly answering this now.)

 

Could be wrong, but it seems to me that it has to do with the words velour (or maybe its velvet) and crochet.

 

Whew! That was fast.

Yes, velours or velvet for the fuzzy "loop" part, and crochet or crochet hook for the "hook" part.

According to Wikipedia: "De Mestral named his invention "Velcro", which is a portmanteau of the two French words velours, meaning 'velvet', and crochet, or 'hook'".

 

You just happened to ask one of only two trivia questions I know the answers to. Here's the other one:

In baseball (sorry cricket fans), what is the maximum number of pitches that may be thrown to any one batter to get him out? Not counting foul balls, of course.

You will also have to justify your answer by explaining.

 

Hmmm. I'm thinking it must be 6 ... 3 balls + 3 strikes = 6.

Unless like the punchline, you walk the elephant and pitch to the giraffe.

 

Not 6

 

I don't want to be a thread-killer. The answer is 11 pitches. Someone else can now ask a new question.

 

Explanation for 11?

 

2 outs, runner on first. Batter at the plate has a 2-2 count on him. Runner attempts to steal on ball 3 to the batter and is thrown out. 3 outs, 5 pitches thrown to the batter. Batter leads off next inning. Works the count to 3-2 (5 more pitches, 10 total). Strikes out, flies out or grounds out on next pitch (6 pitches thrown, 11 total).

 

Lol! I should have refused to answer.

As Mona Lisa Vito said in My Cousin Vinny:

"No, it is a trick question!"