Skeleton Trivia for Friday, 2025-01-24
Things that aren’t and things we don’t know
Hiya Skeleton Crew,
I’ve had this poundin’ feelin’ in my cranium all dang week. I dunno what it is, but it sure is distractin’! Maybe doin’ some trivias’ll help distract me from the distraction.
Answers to Last Time
Cheri Oteri ’n’ Will Ferrell played phony cheerleaders for the East Lake High School Spartans.
Jacob’s big bro in the Bible was Esau.
Today’s Trivias
Trivia 1
Didja know that kelp ain’t a plant? It’s true! Apparently it’s somethin’ called a stramenopile, which I guess is a clade within what larger taxonomical categorization that ... well, it’s kinda hard to describe, if I’m bein’ honest! I looked it up, ’n’ I found this kinda useful description from that “Explain Like I’m 5” forum on reddit:
[REDACTED] is an old discarded catchall name for everything that is:
Eukaryotic (meaning, its cells have functional components called organelles that are bound by internal membranes).
Not part of the main fungal, plant, and animal kingdoms.
There’s also a whole footnote at the Wikipedia article that I guess I’ll spare ya, but suffice it to say that the definition a’ this term is ... well, it’s a li’l wishy-washy, a li’l confusin’.
Huh ... it doesn’t seem like a great thing to ask a trivia question about, now that I think about it.
Ah jeez, ah well, we’re too far in! I think we just gotta go for it!!
What word did I redact above, which ya might’ve learned in school was a taxonomic kingdom but nowadays ain’t really a valid group after all? Despite that, it still gets used in science-y discussions when describin’ critters like slime molds, amoebae, ’n’ algae.
Trivia 2
After all that taxonomical wishy-washiness, let’s maybe segue into somethin’ a li’l more definitive. Like math! Those mathematicians are always so precise about stuff! They always know what’s what or what ain’t, an’ never the twain’ll meet.
Hahaha, just kiddin’!!!!!
Nah, those mathematicians don’t know all SORTS a’ stuff! Like there’s this one problem—named after the guy who figured out how to use li’l teeny-tiny rectangles to find the area under a curve—an’ this problem has been kickin’ around for over 150 years but STILL those math guys ’n’ gals are bangin’ their heads against it!
What’s the name for this hypothesis that says its eponymous zeta function has its zeros only at the negative even integers and complex numbers with real part one-half?
OK then
Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee