Agreed, Jason. The intent of the question was good and purposeful, no doubt.

Funny that most of us, as technologists, are so insistent on a perfectly valid scenario. 🙂 ...

I agree with the others here. The proffered answers were not adequate because there was too much ambiguity on what should be considered "output". If you are expecting...

While some of us got the answer right, the "right" answer was a little misleading. You actually (obviously) cannot rename system objects. So, technically, not ALL objects can...

Yeah. SQL 2000 allows this but will duplicate the start_date column. It will appear as the first column, then also in its original column order.

Had this query also...

Yes.  LEN counts leading blanks (white space), but omits the trailing ones. 

In case there are persons interested...

If you were expecting a count of 8, you needed to use "DATALENGTH"...