The primary purpose of the "giant list of trivia" method of interviewing is to give you cover to only hire people who have "cultural fit" - i.e. look the same, speak the same, and act the same as the people interviewing.
It's also an excellent way to tell the best candidates to look elsewhere for employment. There are some environments where exceptional people will just make waves, get unhappy and leave. If you can filter those people out in the interview process, you can maintain a happy and stable team of mediocrity.
For those of us that realize the best hiring strategy is to find people that cover the weaknesses of the rest of the team, these are pretty terrible questions to ask. A few of them might work well for the initial phone screen, but beyond that they're useless.
