Persistent, Niggling Questions

[Chancellor Valium]

That always bugs me.

England is one nation, not three-and-a-bit, dammit.

On a more ponderous note, why do people assume our civilisation is more 'advanced' than previous ones? Popular culture in the ancient world consisted of races and killing each people and animals in a ring. Now it consists of races and watching people who barely qualify for the term, and do so solely for the purposes of political correctness sit about and wonder which one of the 19-or-so other definitely-not-sub-human(s) they should screw. Less blood, but at least gladiatorial matches don't make your brains want to dribble out of your ears.

?

[catalina_marina]

Originally Posted by Chancellor Valium

That always bugs me.

England is one nation, not three-and-a-bit, dammit.

I like the way you think.

I wish the Netherlands were just the 7 provinces they started with. At least then people would never say I'm from Holland.

[Chancellor Valium]

I thought there were originally 17?

[Nate the Great]

Chandler: Holland. That's near the Netherlands, isn't it?
Joey: Yeah, right. You're not going to catch me like that. The Netherlands are this make-believe place where Peter Pan and Tinker Bell live.
Margha: Oh my.
Ross: Enough with Geography For The Insane, okay?

[catalina_marina]

Originally Posted by Chancellor Valium

I thought there were originally 17?

[Sa'ar Chasm]

I thought that Sol was too small to outright explode. I thought it was just going to fizzle out into a brown dwarf.

It will swell up into a red giant once it exhausts its hydrogen fuel, and then it will fade to a white dwarf after it exhausts its helium fuel. It's not massive enough to undergo any other type of fusion. Brown dwarfs are stars without enough mass to start hydrogen fusion.

[Nate the Great]

Darnit Jim, I'm an engineer, not an astronomer!

[Nate the Great]

Why do so many gas stations have three grades of gas? I've even seen FOUR grade stations. I can understand the mentality behind having a higher grade gas for certain vehicles and situations, but anything between basic and premium seems ludicrous, almost as though it was deliberately supposed to be confusing.

Why are men's and women's bicycles still in different structural styles? I doubt that there are that many women who bike in skirts anymore, and a straight bicycle bar really is stronger structurally, so what's up?

A perpetual scab. Totally unsolvable. Why can't the government just tax the retailers a flat five percent (or whatever) of their total sales, so the retailer can charge flat dollar amounts? Wouldn't it make transactions so much simpler? Even if it has to be tweaked a bit to allow for twenty-five cent intervals to start out with, it'd still save EVERYBODY involved a lot of bother. I've heard two major theorys for the "something bucks and 99 cents" phenomenon. 1. Customers will be fooled that the one cent discount is larger than it really is, perhaps even think that the item really does cost a dollar less. Ludicrous. 2. Having change be required in the operation forces the cashier to open and close the cash drawer for each transaction to get the change, thus removing the option of the cashier simply pocketing the money. Seems a bit odd, as I have a solution to this problem. Scanning the item will generate a receipt. However, if the cash drawer isn't opened and closed within a certain time period, not only will the receipt not print out, a switch could be set up to trigger an alarm. Smart, huh?

[Nate the Great]

Would it really be that much bother to get the entire world onto one voltage and electric outlet type? I suppose the only reason why not to is that eventually we're going to have a united power grid and everyone's going to have to be retrofitted anyway, but still...

Why do so many people hate gift cards? I understand the "it does the same thing currency can, only less efficiently" argument, but for me, that's precisely the point. The inefficiency forces me to buy myself a GIFT, not just food and gas.

Why do some areas split into different geographic areas for new area codes, and others just overlap area codes in the same area? Isn't that a bit of a double standard?

[Nate the Great]

Here's a few from a wonderful book called The Little Book of Stupid Questions by David Borgenicht, 1999, Sourcebooks, Inc.

1. Would the world be a better place if skipping were more common than walking?

2. Which cartoon ability would you rather have:
a. The ability to paint a hole in the ground or a door in a solid wall and go through it;
b. The ability to be run over by a steamroller and shake yourself back to normal, or
c. The ability to fall hundreds of feet off a cliff to your doom and be back in the very next scene?

3. Is life more like the game of Life, Sorry, or Monopoly?

4. What breakfast cereal most describes your personality?

5. If your life story were made into a movie, who would play you?

6. Which of the Seven Dwarves do you most relate to? If you were the eighth dwarf, what would your name be?

7. If you could bring one character to life from your favorite book, who would it be?

8. If you had a theme song, what song would you pick? What if the song were played every time you entered a room or walked down the street? Would this change your choice?

9. What would you say as your last words if you were about to be executed?