Was the million dollar question on Who Wants to be a Millionaire yesterday 1-18-2000.
You choices: 93M, 139M, 39M, 9.3M
Ah, ha. Might be worth $100.00 but a million?
I had a GD thread called “The Dumbing of America” a few weeks ago on this point.
Today I’m home from work, Maury Povich is on TV, and I can feel brain cells dying even as I type.
Foolishness and stupidity are exalted. Self-esteem is important; actual knowledge is unimportant. The importance of your opinion is measured by how loudly you can shout.
It’s depressing.
- Rick
And the correct answer itself is an approximation…
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That’s worse than the little blue-haired 7th grade teacher who asks questions like:
The earth is :
a) 4.1 B years old
b) 4.2 B years old
c) 4.3 B years old
d) 4.5 B years old
That’s ALL it takes to win a mil? An approximation of a simple number you learned in junior high, 'scuse me; middle school?
Maybe I’m just a geeky engineer, but I think it’s kinda cool to know the following:
- OP question
- distance from the Earth to the Moon
- diameter of Earth, Moon & Sun
- speed of light
- speed of sound in air
- distance to nearest star(and name of said star)
The guy even took astronomy in college, and he was hemming and hawing.
I was going to drive to NY and strangle him if he’d gotten it wrong. 
I looked in the mirror today/My eyes just didn’t seem so bright
I’ve lost a few more hairs/I think I’m going bald - Rush
Correction:
(After informal poll of co-workers, none of whom knew this stuff…and before one of you guys beats me to it),
I AM a geeky engineer!!
Handy do you suppose they just needed another millionaire?? Its been a while you know.
“I think it speaks to the duality of man sir.”
(private Joker in Full Metal Jacket)
aha-
I think thats the point. Shouldn’t getting the million be a spectacle becuase of the difficulty of the question? Not just to give away alot of money?
-Frankie
Lack of charisma can be fatal
Actually, none of those is correct. The correct answer would be 150M, or 150 million kilometres.
Oh, they were speaking in miles? Then it’s 93M. But no units were given.
And people wonder why I don’t watch mich TV anymore, though APTN, Teletoon, the Space Channel, and Newsworld are good. I just never remember…
Rigardu, kaj vi ekvidos.
Man these last few episodes they had only been giving away less than 50K. Several people got knocked down to 1K when they missed something below the 32K question.
People were probably beginning to tune out.
Who wants to watch a show where people get the wrong answers? They could watch Jeopardy to get smarter, they want to watch people get rich.
He is only a millionare for a short while on paper, unless he already had a net worth of 500K or more.
Jeffery
The correct answer is one astronomical unit, or eight light-minutes. Nobody measures this stuff in miles.
Any similarity in the above text to an English word or phrase is purely coincidental.
Or at least that’s what I’ll say to make myself feel better for not knowing the answer in the OP. Do you guys think I’m stupid now?
Hey, at least Regis didn’t ask him who is buried in Grant’s Tomb! 
The answer is 1 astronomical unit, by definition. I think.
Ya think maybe if Cecil was a contestant, he’d ace every question without using a single lifeline?
I’ll tell you which question I missed: “Who was on the first cover of People magazine?” I had NO idea.
>< DARWIN >
__L___L
Mia Farrow, of course! Thats my final answer.
I recall after the first run of this show they said they would ‘make some changes so people could win more often.’ does insutling our intelligence count?
Hm. 93. Well, you learn something new everyday. Personally, I’m with Boris and Surgoshan. Call it 1 AU and be done with it.