"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” - Albert Einstein.
For those of you who don't know me, Einstein is one of my greatest influences. Many brush him aside and say yeah yeah yeah he's a genius and never bother to look at his work. I could go on and on about how upset Einstein would be at the state of current global affairs and society, but I'll limit my rant to one facet.
I always had a hard time figuring out the direction of this quote. Nuclear bombs? Computers? Machines taking jobs away from people? What was Einstein getting at here? Naturally, these thoughts race through my mind at all hours of the day until one night, as I sat at a local bar, it dawned on me. Einstein's quote was eerily prophetic. Clearly, the quote applies to Trivia Nights.
See, I was at a trivia night, basically the most human activity of all sorts. Why? Because you combine brains, competition, and drinking. See, all animals can have strength, but only humans can participate in trivia nights. As for competition, Capitalist society was founded on competition. Even in the most primitive of societies, men competed to catch food, women, typhoid fever. Lastly, drinking. Well, we may not love drinking as much as half the guys you went to college with, who were too afraid to drink in high school, let alone middle school, but all of the sudden think they're heroes cuz they won a beirut game senior year at college. Point being, with so many assholes that go tommy tough nuts when they get a sniff of beer, we still find ourselves at the local watering holes.

Now, having established that trivia night is the epitome of humanity, you're probably wondering where I'm going with this. Well, think about the last time you were at trivia night. You were probably there with your friends, feeling both excited and confident that you'll do well. When assembling a trivia team, it's important to be diverse. Don't just pick friends. Pick the guy who knows music, movies, and TV (Jimmy), the guy who knows history and geography (me), the guy who knows sports (Rocco), and the guy who knows how to blow tons of dudes (D). With a diverse team, you'll have more disagreements over the right answer, but more often than not, the right answer will be had.
Anyways, everyone goes to trivia night to have a good time, drink, and hopefully win. Yet, times are a changin'. When cell phones first broke onto the scene. They had to be banned. The same guys who probably argue incessantly that the game of "beiruit" is called beerpong are probably the reason that cell phones got banned at trivia nights (It's called Beirut. See the movie Beerfest to find out what Beerpong actually is). Taking self righteous douchebaggery to a whole new level, these guys would call or text their friends, mothers, boyfriends and ask for the answer while sitting at the table. Naturally, when four guys with sunglasses, button down shirts ordering pitchers of Zima not only know what the Zimmerman Note is, but know that it was sent to Mexico, from Germany, discovered by Britain, and implicated the United States and was the boiling point for America to declare war on Germany in WWI; eyebrows will be raised.
So clearly, this group had been on the phone calling people for answers all night. It happened all over the country because let's face it, these shmucks are a dime a dozen. So then people complained about not havin cell phones so they were unfortunately let back into trivia nights. Now, the rules are pretty grey "you can't leave the table with a cell phone, you can't talk on the phone etc etc) but you'll still find people sneaking out and doing just that.

Well, I wasn't sure about Einstein's quote application until now. See, the Iphone has been created. The IPhone has killed Trivia Nights. Completely. Worse off, the same type of people who are known to own IPhones are exactly the type of people you'd expect to cheat on trivia night, with a few exceptions. It's the perfect storm. I'm sure we'll all own a version of a touch screen hand held computer someday, but the point is, the only people who own them now

are exactly the the type who cheat on trivia. So naturally, trivia nights are doing to become extinct. How do you even police IPhone usage? Disable the Internet everywhere? I suppose that could work. but in the city? There's always a connection.
All I can do is pray. Einstein was right. Technology has exceeded our humanity...and is set to destroy something so dear to all of us...Our trivia nights.
-- Boosh