Here Goes Nothing! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

In a book that Pirsig describes has little or no factual information about Zen Buddhism or motorcycles he uses a seventeen day journey from Minnesota to California as a method of expanding on his thoughts and theories on the "Metaphysics of Quality". As an example of his views on the meaning of "mu" he offers us the binary number system of a computer circuit. He advises us that it is silly to consider that this system only exhibits two states - a voltage for "one" and a voltage for "zero". "What happens when the power is turned off?" he asks, "the circuits will revert to a "mu" state".

Pirsig's book sold in excess of five million copies worldwide. "The Tao of Pooh" was written by Benjamin Hoff, "The Alchemist" by Paolo Coelho and "City of Thieves" is a novel by David Benioff.

Answer: Jeremy Hillary Boob Ph.D

Boob appears while the submarine is travelling through a blank region called "The Sea of Nothing". He's described as a pudgy creature, wearing a painted clown face and a cotton tail. His introduction is preceded by the following bit of "nothing"...

(Ringo) Here, lads. Look at this.
(John) What do think it is?
(George) Nothing.
(Ringo) Looks like nothing.
(Paul) It's a local inhabitant.
(Ringo) He's probably one of the nothings.
(Paul) At least that's something. Let's show him our motor.
(John) Steady on. You don't want to show your motor to just anybody.
(George) But this is a nobody.

The Beatles then sing "Nowhere Man".

The Beatles do invite Boob, who describes himself as an "eminent physicist, polyglot classicist, prize winning botanist, hard-biting satirist, talented pianist and a good dentist too" onto their submarine and decide to take him to Somewhere. In return he helps them defeat the Blue Meanies.

Answer: Zero

"Zero is silence. Zero is the beginning. Zero is round. Zero spins. Zero is the moon. The sun is Zero. Zero is white. The desert is Zero. The sky above Zero. The night."
(This is an excerpt from a 1963 poem by Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Gunther Uecker, the founders of this post war avante-garde art movement).

The inner circle of artists, Mack, Piene and Uecker got together looking to, in their words, move their work away from all of the "subjective" post war art movements. Foremost among these were the Art Informel and the Tachisme abstract styles. Their own aims were to create works founded on light and space. Essentially, artists would allow themselves freedom to explore areas of light, motion, space, seriality and colour, with the latter usually being a monochrome. The use of monochrome is probably the easiest example to use to showcase the concept of Zero. Colour is viewed as a perception of light, therefore, the use of a single colour allowed for a deeper exploration of areas such as shading and texture. Perhaps the most famous exponent in the use of monochrome is the French artist Yves Klein and his love affair with the colour blue. "Blue" Klein once stated "has no dimensions, it is beyond dimensions".

Answer: Duck

The term is said to have originated from the shortening of the phrase "duck's egg". This, in turn, was coined from the view that a duck's egg resembled the number 0.

Possibly the most famous duck in Test cricket is that of the game's most famous batsmen, Sir Donald Bradman. A mere score of four runs in his final Test innings would have left "the Don" with a career batting average of 100. Instead, he failed to pick Eric Hollies' googly, was bowled without scoring, which left his average at 99.94.

Another notable duck was that of Dr. Roy Park. Dr Park was a dominant batsman for his state in the early 1900s though he only got to play one Test for Australia. In his only innings he was bowled for a first ball duck. Legend tells of his wife, who was in the grandstand knitting as Roy prepared to take strike, dropping her yarn. In the moment that she bent to pick it up she missed her husband's entire Test career.

Answer: True

At its launch in 2005 Coke Zero was the company's largest product launch in over twenty years. The campaign strategy took the view that "diet" drinks were primarily seen as "women's" drinks and they sought to promote a "healthier" alternative for males without the attached "diet" stigma. To this end Coke
(a) Kept the word "diet" away from the product despite its low calorie status. Instead they described the product as "calorie free".
(b) Worked hard to produce a taste that was indistinguishable from their standard Coca-Cola.
(c) Maintained the different flavour profile for its Diet Coke range.

As if to illustrate the success of its attempts, in the United Kingdom this product has the nickname "Bloke Coke".

Answer: Cypher

Played by Joe Pantoliano, the character is known as Mr. Reagan, but is generally referred to as Cypher through the movie. Cypher has had enough of living on the hovercraft (the Nebuchadnezzer) and he's lost faith in Morpheus' prophecy about "the One". He also wishes that he never knew the truth about the Matrix. He makes a deal with Agent Smith that nearly sees Trinity killed at the start of the film and then activates a cell phone (which he throws into a trash can) that betrays the team's position to the agents when they take Neo to visit the Oracle. Cypher then makes his way back to the hovercraft where he shoots Tank and proceeds to kill Dozer, Apoc and Switch. He's at the point of terminating Neo and Trinity when Tank recovers from his wound and kills him.

There is some irony in the choice of names for Cypher, though whether this is deliberate ploy by the writers is not clear.
-Cypher means zero and, in his deal with Agent Smith, the character says he wants to "remember nothin'".
-Mr. Reagan may well be a reference to President Ronald Reagan who claimed memory loss (remember nothin') when he was questioned over the Iran-Contra affair. In his later years the President suffered from Alzheimer's disease which could also allude to the statement of "remember nothin'".
-Finally, Cypher's plans would have amounted to "nothin'" as it is revealed that Agent Smith had no intention of honouring the deal.

Answer: X-Men Origins: Wolverine

In the comic book universe, Christoph Nord, who later changes his name to David North, is an East German born mutant who has the power to greatly absorb kinetic energy through impact. This enables him to survive falls from great heights, take a beating from beings that are superhumanly strong and absorb energy blasts. Add to this that he's a dead eye with any weapon (as mentioned earlier), highly skilled in hand to hand combat and covert operations, has no scent and the vibranium armour that he wears allows him to move in total silence and he becomes a real handful for any opponent to deal with.

However, there are some differences to this back-story and the one presented for the Agent Zero that is portrayed by Daniel Henney in the 2009 "X-Men" film.

In the movie he is given an Asian ethnicity, is shown as Stryker's second in command and is instilled with a streak of ruthlessness that is far greater than that of the comic book agent. He is "supposedly" killed in the film when Wolverine sets fire to his crashed helicopter.

Answer: Billy Preston

Billy Preston was considered to be one of the top session musicians of the 1960s and a keyboard virtuoso. Apart from the Beatles he also collaborated on works for artists as diverse as Little Richard, Ray Charles and the Rolling Stones. He would go on to achieve solo success with songs such as "Will It Go Round in Circles", "That's the Way God Planned It" and the above-named "Nothing From Nothing". The latter, released in 1974, would reach number one on Billboard's Hot 100, spend nearly five months in the charts and be used in an advertisement by Chevrolet.

Written by the combination of Lennon and McCartney the song "Get Back" was released in April of 1969. The release was credited to The Beatles with Billy Preston.

Answer: Yes

To understand the answer you first need to understand what sets and subsets are. A set is a collection of elements. In the above question the elements that form set "B" are the integers 1,2,3 and 4. When we take pieces of that set to form another set we have created a subset. For example (1,2,3), which we will call set "C". Set "C" is a subset of set "B" because every element that is in set "C" can also be found in set "B". Then we look at it the other way - every element in set "B" is not in set "C" therefore, set "B" cannot be a subset of set "C".

Now let's go back to that empty set and we ask "is every element in the empty set "A" also in set "B"... and that's where we scratch our heads because there are no elements in empty set "A". Here we need to use a little bit of logic and look at it from another angle by saying... if we cannot find any elements in the empty set "A" that are not in set "B" then, by extension, empty set "A" must be a subset of set "B". In fact, the empty set is a subset of every set, including itself.

Answer: The Never Ending Story

In Michael Ende's book the Nothing that he has created is an abstract concept. It is described as an emptiness that follows human beings around and feeds on their despair and the moments in which they lose hope. In the process the Nothing grows stronger and destroys the world in its wake.

However, in the 1984 film version of the book this piece of mysticism now needs to be personified and the film makers do this by turning the Nothing into a dark, malevolent cloud-like figure. I will grant that it looks like a gathering storm and there is a sense of evil foreboding about its presence but it now seems "real". It is no longer the monster in your imagination that you know is under your bed but, no matter how fast you may be, when you look it is gone.

My first attempt to reconcile with Michael Ende's creation of the Nothing within the realms of a children's story was a little mind-blowing. Was this simply too much of a leap for a child to make? This entity that he has created is almost existentialist... it's a non-thing... it literally is a nothing. Then I think that perhaps it is in the right realm. Perhaps this is a concept that only a child's mind can readily adapt to and that, in the hands of adults, this Nothing becomes "something".

Please don't send me notes or comments to tell me why my thinking is flawed. This is me merely spitting thoughts out loud. They're meant to be food for your thoughts. They are not meant to be taken as gospel...they're just my little bits of nothing.