Clever answers to stupid questions

I have a myspace page - I know, I know... anyway someone posted a list of "things to think about" which were mostly stupid semantic questions, with a few genuinely interesting questions. As I started reading them I was answering them in my head, so I decided to have a go at them. Most of the answers are from my own head, but a few I needed to research further. A coupleI am not 100% sure on, but are ok as far as I know. I ended up answering 68 out of about 85 questions. Most of the ones I missed were either boring or incredibly stupid, but if I can find the original bullitin on myspace, (bulletins are offline at the moment for some reason,) I'll post the rest.

For those I had to research: thanks goes to wikipedia, dictionary.com, howstuffworks.com, google, and several random sites, as well as the book Anatomy for the artist by Sarah Simblet.

Here are my answers:

1. Are people who are allergic to nuts allergic to coconuts too?
No, coconuts are a fruit.

2. Are Zebras white with black stripes or black with white stripes?
It is generally believed that zebras are dark animals, with white stripes where the pigmentation is inhibited. The pigment of the hair is found solely in the hair and not in the skin. The reasons for thinking that they were originally pigmented animals are that (1) white horses would not survive well in the African plains or forests; (2) there used to be a fourth species of zebra, the quagga (which was overeaten to extinction in the eighteen hundreds). The quagga had the zebra striping pattern in the front of the animal, but had a dark rump; (3) when the region between the pigmented bands becomes too wide, secondary stripes emerge, as if suppression was weakening.

3. Aren't all rooms room temperature?
Yes, semantically but 'room temperature' is a measuring point at which the temperature is deemed comfortable

4. Can bald men get lice?
In theory, yes but lice use the hair to climb, cling to and attach their eggs to, so it would be unlikely.

5. Can crop circles be square?
Crop circles is an overall term, due to the original formations seen, but crop patterns have been created in all manner of shapes.

6. Can someone give up lent for lent?
No. This is a logical contradiction. You can’t give up giving up, it’s a double negative.

7. Can you breathe through your nose and mouth at the same time?
Yes due to the human descended larynx.

8. Can you get cornered in a round room?
No, another logical contradiction.

9. Can you make a candle out of earwax?
No, candle wax is flammable when melted - it's actually the gas that burns. Ear wax is a totally different substance and not flammable in that way.

10. Can you write in pencil on an eraser?
Yes. (You've never done that?)

11. Do cows drink milk?
Obviously as calves, all cows suckle from their mother.

12. Do cows have calf muscles?
No, that is a nickname for the gastrocnemius muscle. Cow physiology is different to humans.

13. Do ducks sneeze?
No, sneezing is a product of the human olfactory and respiratory systems, usually in connection with the immune system.

14. Do glow-in-the-dark objects stop glowing when somebody turns the lights on?
No, but their apparent luminosity decreases relative to the luminosity of the brighter object - hence why you can't see the stars during the daytime. They are still there, but the much brighter light of the sun renders them impossible to see.

15. Do octopuses have arms or legs?
Neither, they have tentacles.

16. Do people with big eyes see at a wider range than people with smaller eyes?
Human eyes vary between 20mm and 30mm in diameter on average, but the difference in the angle viewed would be imperceptible between the two extremes.

17. Do stairs go up or down?
Up and down are relative and mostly arbitrary terms until an object in motion can be given a relative vector, seen to be in accordance with one and in opposition to the other.

18. Does anyone actually kill two birds with one stone?
The statistical possibility that someone, somewhere throughout all of history has achieved this act is quite high, however the use of the word 'does', implies an ongoing or at least present tense usage and I would like to hope not.

19. How can someone 'draw a blank'?
The 'drawing' refers to drawing from memory rather than artistry, and probably shares an analogous linguistic form with drawing water from a well.

20. How can you hear yourself think?
The exact processes are unknown but the human mind is capable of replicating and inventing sounds, (and images,) within it's own confines.

21. How can you tell when sour cream goes bad?
The same way you tell when 'normal' cream has gone bad - it smells and tastes different and eventually will develop mould.

22. How do the "Keep off the grass" signs get there?
Someone puts them there. The idea being that if one person walks over the grass to put a sign up it will not cause much damage, but if everyone was to walk over the grass, it would.

23. If 75% of all accidents happen within 5 miles of home, why not move 10 miles away?
Because 'home' is not a fixed location, but a relative one. So if you move 10 miles away, that is now where your home is and all the things that most people statistically have accidents with would still be within 5 miles of the new location.

24. If a cat always lands on its feet and buttered bread always lands butter side down, what would happen if you tied buttered bread on top of a cat?
Firstly, neither of those statements are true. Cats try to ensure they land on their feet but don't always. buttered bread is subjected to the same laws of physics and probability as everything else and does not always fall butter side down, but people percieve this to be the case because they forget about the times it landed butter side up because there was less impact on them.

If you were to tie a piece of buttered bread to a cat and drop them so that they were both 90 degrees to the floor, the cat, being an animate, sentient life form concerned with its own safety, would try to right itself and would most likely land on it's feet. The bread, being an inanimate object, would be subjected to whatever moves the cat made, unless the string broke, in which case it would depend on its distance from the floor at the time, along with its rotational speed, if any, and other physical factors.

25. If a criminal turns himself in shouldn't he get the reward money?
No. Criminality is usually punished by society, not rewarded.

26. If a word is spelled wrong in the dictionary, how would you know?
If you thought this may be the case, you could check other dictionaries, including online ones and then contact the publisher in order to get them to check and rectify their mistake.

27. If an orange is orange, why isn't a lime called a green or a lemon called a yellow?
Presumably the colour was named after the fruit, not the other way around. The orange tree is called Citrus Aurantium in latin, the lemon tree Citrus Limon.

28. If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
No. The words moron and morality share no linguistic roots.

29. If heat rises then shouldn’t hell be cold?
No. As previously stated, up and down are relative terms. That's like saying Australia should be cold because it's down.

30. If it is a 50mph wind and you drive your car at 50mph downwind, if you stick your head outside would you feel the wind?
You would feel the air passing over you as you rushed through it, yes. Wind is usually defined as moving air, so you could argue that if you are moving through it, it is not wind, or else you define it as moving because you take yourself as the fixed point of interest as we are prone to do.

31. If it is zero degrees outside today and tomorrow it is supposed to be twice as cold, how cold will it be tomorrow?
Strictly mathematically speaking, this is a paradox as zero is the absence of anything. Pragmatically speaking, zero in temperature is defined as the point at which water freezes in celcius and colder than that goes into minus figures. It would then depend on how much the temperature dropped over the previous day, (assuming we are measuring in days due to the usage of 'today' and 'tomorrow',) therefore if it was 2C yesterday and zero today, we can effectively expect tomorrow to reach -2C.

32. If money doesn't grow on trees then why do banks have branches?
The word, as with many words in English, has multiple meanings, (the word with the most number of meanings in English is 'set',) but branches in this sense still keeps some of the original meaning of being offshoots from a main body.

33. If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do they all have to drown?
No, the routine would stop and if the person could not be revived, the appropriate authorities would be notified and the show cancelled.

34. If quizzes are quizzical then what are tests?
Testing.

35. If someone can't see, they're blind and if someone can't hear, they're deaf, so what do you call people who can't smell?
Anosmic.

36. If someone told you they were a pathological liar, would you believe them?
It would depend on other, mainly non verbal clues. If their body language gave clues as to their assertation being false, then I would deduce that they were indeed lying, but that the condition was not classed as pathalogical. If their body language suggested they were being truthful I would deduce that yes, they were a pathalogical liar and they were telling me this honestly because their condition does not preclude them from ever telling the truth.

37. If swimming is such exercise, why are whales fat?
Swimming is good excercise for humans, who usually do it in warm and relatively shallow waters. Whales have a subcutenous layer of fat in order to keep warm while swimming at depths that would prove lethal to humans, where the water is extremely cold.

38. If the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into?
The theory that the universe is expanding is exactly that - a theory, but one that seems to hold weight due to observations in red shifts from distant stars. You might as well ask, what was there before the universe, to which the most logical and obvious answer, applying Occam's razor, is - nothing.

39. If you are driving at near the speed of light and turn on your headlights, what will you see?
It is impossible to drive any craft at such a speed presently and scientists generally agree that ever being able to do so is extemely unlikely, however even if you are travelling at the speed of light, the light being emitted is accelerating away from you at the speed of light, so it would appear normal.

40. If you have x-ray vision, and you can see through anything, wouldn't you see through everything and actually see nothing?
No. Xrays are very good at penetrating things like fabric and soft tissues, but the more dense the object, the less x-rays penetrate, hence why bones show up on x-rays otherwise the sheet would be blank and they would be no use in medical imaging.

41. If you stole a pen from a bank then would it still be considered a bank robbery?
In theory taking any article from a bank could be considered a 'bank robbery', but the term is traditionally used to describe the theft of a large quantity of money or bonds. Crimes are judged on the value of what is taken and pens cost so little that a bank is unlikely to press charges for the theft of one from its premises, although many attatch them to counters with ball bearing chains to avoid them being taken.

42. If you take a shower, where do you put it?
If you are taking it from the shop you bought it in, the usual place to put it is in your bathroom. If you mean the act of having a shower, then it is a common lexicographical term and does not literally mean 'to take' in this case.

43. If you were born exactly on 12:00 midnight on December 31st –January 1st, which year would you say you were born in?
The year begginning Jan 1st, as it was only the previous year until the stroke of 12. If you had been born at 11:59 and 59 seconds, you would have been born in the previous year, ending December 31st, however births are rarely so precise.

44. If you were on a plane going the speed of sound and walked from the back of the plane to the front, would you be walking faster than the speed of sound?
No, due to the laws of motion and momentum, you would still be walking at roughly 4 miles per hour, (the average human walking rate,) relative to the surface you are walking on.

45. Is French kissing in France just called kissing?
No, apparently they call it American kissing. - I'll check this with my half French girlfriend though.

46. On the periodic table, why do some elements have symbols with letters that aren't even in the word?
They come from the latin versions or similar. For example, PB, which stands for lead, comes from the latin plumbum, from which we derive the word plumbing, as the Romans used lead for their water pipes. Other examples include: Sn - Tin - Stannum (Latin) Ag - Silver - Argentum (Latin), Argunas (Sanskrit) Cu - Copper - Cuprum (Latin).

47. Shouldn't there be a shorter word for "monosyllabic"?
No, the word is a conjunction of 'mono', meaning one and syllabic, which is formed from the word syllable, meaning an uninterrupted segment of speech consisting of a center of relatively great sonority with or without one or more accompanying sounds of relatively less sonority. No other word, conjunction or otherwise, has been formed to represent the same meaning. Besides which the length of a word often bears no direct correlation to it's meaning.

48. What are those little things on the end of your shoelaces called?
Ferrules.

49. What colour is a mirror?
A mirror reflects light, so in general has no colour, but often mirrors may have a slightly blue cast. Other mirrors maybe heavily coloured, either the backing or the glass itself, in which case it could be argued that they are not mirrors in the strictest sense, but instead just highly reflective surfaces.

50. What did cured ham actually have?
Again this is a word with more than one meaning. Curing, in relation to meat is a preservative process dating back hundreds of years and does not connote disease in this sense.

51. What does OK actually mean?
It is taken to mean everything is alright. Its exact origins are unknown, but it is believed to have come from a corruption of 'all correct', i.e. 'oll korrect', which was a popular way of speaking in the 1830's.

52. What would happen if everyone was to flush their toilet at the same time?
Chances are that the water companies would struggle to cope with the demand and burst pipes, flooding and sewage strewn streets would ensue.

53. What would happen if you were to feed a pig some bacon?
It would almost certainly eat it, digest it and eventually, defecate the remains out. Pigs are omnivorous but lack the mental capacity to distinguish between meat from one animal to another and so have no concept of cannibalism, which is an exclusively human idea.

54. Where do they get the seeds to grow seedless grapes?
Seedless grapes are seedless because the seed aborts during development, termed stenspermocarpy. You can see the remnant of the aborted seed(s) in the grape. Grape breeders have found a way to remove the developing embryo when it is very small to prevent it from aborting, termed embryo rescue. They can then raise seedless grapes from the rescued embryos to use in breeding new types of seedless grapes. For vineyards, seedless grapes are grafted.

55. Where does the white go when the snow melts?
The white colour is caused by the refraction of light due to the interactions of photons within the crystalline structure of ice. Because snow is a lot of ice crystals on top of each other, eventually all the different wavelengths of light are refracted back out equally, equalling a white colour. When it melts, it becomes water and the crystalline structure is lost.

56. Where would we be without rhetorical questions?
Literally, exactly at the same point in time & space that we are now. Linguistically we would lose a mostly useless and often frustrating device.

57. Which way does a compass point in space?
It would either float freely or point to the nearest magnetic field.

58. Who was the first person to see a cow, and think what would happen if I pulled those dangling bits and drink the liquid that comes out?
It's unlikely that things happened that way. Someone will have seen a calf suckling, associated it with humans breast feeding and possibly tested it.

59. Why do men have nipples?
Because all human fetuses start as female in the womb. After conception the developing embryo follows a female template. It's only after six to eight weeks that the effect of a gene on the Y chromosome kicks in for boy embryos. This gene stimulates the production and influence of hormones such as testosterone, which 'masculinise' the embryo by altering physical development to form male features. Nipples, however, are formed before this masculinisation process takes place, and nothing that goes on later reverses this. So the story that God made Eve from Adam's rib got it the wrong way round. Males are an adaptation of females and the nipples are just one piece of evidence for this.

60. Why does a round pizza come in a square box?
Square boxes are easier to make, given the materials used and are also easier to store and carry.

61. Why doesn't superglue stick to the inside of the tube?
It is the glues interaction with the air that causes a chemical reaction, making it harden and useful as an adhesive. There is little or no air in the tube and the glue is kept in liquid form.

62. Why is a square meal served on round plates?
It is sometimes said that this phrase originated from the Royal Navy practise of serving meals on square wooden plates. Such plates did exist and so that sounds like a plausible story. However, there's no evidence to support it and in fact, the lateness of the first printed record (see below) pretty well rules this out as a reasonable theory. The Royal Navy's records and many thousands of ship's logs are still available and, if the phrase came from that source, it would surely have been recorded before the mid-19th century. The word square has many meanings, including 'proper, honest, straightforward', and that's the meaning here. This isn't a rectilinear meal on right-angled crockery or otherwise, but a good and satisfying meal.

63. Why is ice clear but snow white?
Ice isn’t clear, it’s translucent, which means most of the photons pass through it. They do refract, but few are actually reflected and it is the absorption and reflection of different wavelengths of light that give colour to an object. If all the light is reflected, it is white. If all light is absorbed, it is black and varying degrees in between. If most of the light is neither absorbed nor reflected, the object is translucent or transparent. For snow, see 55.

64. Why is it called pineapple, when's there neither pine nor apple in it?
The word "pineapple", first recorded in 1398, was originally used to describe the reproductive organs of conifer trees (now termed pine cones). When European explorers discovered this tropical fruit, they called them "pineapples" (term first recorded in that sense in 1664) because it resembled what we now know as pine cones. The term "pine cone" was first recorded in 1695 to replace the original meaning of "pineapple"

65. Why is it so hard to remember how to spell 'mnemonic'?
Some people may find it difficult due to the odd arrangement of consonants at the beginning, however others may find it easy to remember for the same reason - the odd arrangement making it stand out.

66. Why is it, that the sun darkens the colour of your skin, but lightens the colour of your hair?
Hair and skin are two different substances and their pigmentation changes in different ways.

67. Why isn't phonetic spelled the way it sounds?
Not all words are onomatopoeic. Just because the word has that meaning does not mean it should be.

68. Would a fly without wings be called a walk?
No, it would still be a fly, short for flying insect, in much the same way that a person with no arms is still a person.