Thus revealed, the creature buried its nose in the tire-tilled soil...
December 5, 2007
What.
Category: Miscellany

So we were just watching a bit of "The Science Bowl" on one of the local education channels. Seeing the show always brings back some fond memories for me -- I was one of the alternates for our middle school team (wow, that was like 15 years ago!), which basically meant that I got to miss classes and accompany the team to games, where the other alternates and I got to watch via closed circuit TV and eat cookies backstage -- but that's not what motivated me to post about it. No, I'm posting because of the sheer ridiculousness of the answer I just heard.

See, Mr. Z (the host; good ol' Mr. Z is still at it!) paraphrased the Alvarez hypothesis -- leaving out the relevant bit of info, of course -- and asked the contestants to note which heavenly bodies the hypothesis proposed was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. And immediately one of the teams buzzed in and gave the following answer:

Angels.

They even repeated it.

ANGELS.

You should have seen the look on Mr. Z's face. Or on mine, for that matter, at least for all of the two nanoseconds it lasted before I collapsed into a maniacal fit of laughter.

Incidentally, we had to turn from it because the teams ring in via a bell, which caused poor Bacardi to bark and twirl like mad because he kept thinking someone was at the door.

Angels killed the dinosaurs.

-posted by Wes | 8:45 pm | Comments (4)
4 Comments »
  • De says:

    I'm guessing the answer was based on the use of the term "heavenly bodies." But unless dinosaurs somehow made it into the Bible, it was still a pretty dumb answer.

  • Wes says:

    Oh yeah, obviously that had something to do with it, but the question was along the lines of: "According to the Alvarez hypothesis, what heavenly bodies were responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs?" Seeing them answer "angels" was just amazing.

    Granted, the other team gave some pretty moronic answers too (there was something about a leaf being hydrophobic and they answered that it was afraid of water, which might not have been so stupid in another context but sounds utterly ridiculous when applied to presumably non-sentient leaves), but nothing topped the angels response.

  • Ro says:

    "Angels killed the dinosaurs."

    That would make an awesome shirt. 🙂

  • Wes says:

    Remind me to make that shirt, Ro. That would indeed be awesome! 🙂

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