Infrequently Answered Questions
1/5/10 Take no Prisoners
Infrequently Answered Question #40: What's the worst advice ever?
A: That question sounds like the setup for a joke involving some monumental failure like General Custer before the battle of the Little Bighorn. There's even a monument to that monumental failure.
Rather than some specific bit of advice, perhaps the worst advice is a type you've likely gotten yourself one time or another. It's when someone tells you after the fact what you should have done, or what you shouldn't have done. Which, I suppose, would be good advice if you had the opportunity to do it over again, but is fairly worthless if you don't have a time machine.
Getting advice of this ilk is only somewhat less annoying than hearing "I told you so." When examined, "you should have" pretty much amounts to little more than "I could have told you so." Which leads to another old phrase, "adding insult to injury."
All the same, for my money the worst advice might be, "you can attract more flies with honey than with vinegar." While this may have the ring of truth, I don't see the benefit in attracting flies in the first place. When have you ever heard anyone complain "there's not enough flies in here?"
In parting, my favorite line about advice comes from Calvin Coolidge who said about Herbert Hoover, "I've gotten a good deal of advice from him over the years. All of it bad."
12/3/09 A Penny for Your Two Cents Worth
Infrequently Answered Question #39: If your two cents worth is a two-bit opinion is it worth a plugged nickle? And what is a plugged nickle worth anyway? A penny for your thoughts.
A: These cliches were coined (pardon the pun) a long time ago when two cents might have been worth something and plugging nickles paid off. I mean, you used to get a shave and a haircut for two bits. As in "DA-dada-DA-da. Da DA."
There's been a lot if inflation since, so none of it adds up any more, if it ever did. Unfortunately, not only don't I know what a plugged nickle is worth nowadays, I can't tell you what a plugged nickle actually is.
Then there's the advice "Don't take any wooden nickles." Which I suppose is saying only coins made of precious metals are worth anything. Yet the big money is just printed paper which doesn't raise any eyebrows and nobody bats an eyelash at accepting as valuable. In fact, having a tall stack of the green stuff will cause a grin from ear to ear. Which sounds painfull, but is welcomed nonetheless.
Despite all the facial expressions mentioned, at the prices given it would seem to suggest what it all really boils down to is, "Talk is cheap."
10/27/09 Maybe It's the Thinner Air
Infrequently Answered Question #38: If a low-fat diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables combined with lots of physical activity were supposed to be the ultimate in promoting a long, healthy life, wouldn't it follow Chinese peasant farmers should be the longest-living, healthiest people around. Are they?
A: This one's easy to answer. No, they're not.
It would seem the secret to longevity is to be short. After all we've all heard of little old ladies and little old men, but who speaks of big old ladies or big old men?
I can't claim to be an expert on health and biology, but I will offer my speculation anyway. I think many folks worry too much about excesses when the real danger is shortages. Thing is, you can deal with too much by discarding the overage, but you can't make up for what's lacking as it's just not there. Dieting is voluntary shortage. Just something to consider.
9/14/09 Houston, what's the problem?
Infrequently Answered Question #37: What's the most over-rated thing ever?
A: It'd have to be landing a man on the moon. How often have you heard someone say, "We can land a man on the moon, but we can't... fill in the blank with your major concern or pet peeve." Which means either we're real slackers about a lot of things or landing a man on the moon wasn't all it's cracked up to be.
When you think about it, landing on the moon was a fairly straight-forward engineering problem. Nowhere near as difficult as dealing with complex or even chaotic systems like the environment or human biology and disease. When you consider social systems and the human element, well, confusion and unpredictability are the only things you can be sure of, oxymoronically enough.
On second thought, perhaps the most over-rated thing is sliced bread. Consider all the things that are the best things since sliced bread, as if it were the benchmark to which all things are compared. But, c'mon, what's so great about it? Taking a knife and cutting through bread is not exactly rocket science, is it?
8/26/09 Munch a Bunch of Lunch
Infrequently Answered Question #36: What were people eating for lunch before the Earl of Sandwich came along and invented the sandwich?
A: To answer that I'd have to consult my great-great-great-etc. grandfather. Which won't help because he's been dead and buried a long time now. So, since I'm too lazy to do the research and don't know the answer by accident, I'll speculate. In other words make something up.
Before sandwiches people ate bread with cheese and/or meat, often in the form of sausages. Which sounds like a sandwich only it wasn't all put together as such, but was eaten as separate bits. Or possibly with the cheese or meats on top like an open-faced sandwich which wouldn't be called that though it was.
Now this all sounds like lunch would be messier, and it probably was. Though back in those days life was generally messier as, like sandwiches, indoor plumbing didn't exist either. Nor did refrigeration, paper napkins, sliced bread or toothpicks with colored cellulose tassels, all being helpful to easy sandwich making and eating.
Yes indeed, life was simpler and more natural back in the day, which is to say messier. Which is also to say dirtier as there's nothing more natural than dirt.
7/14/09 Digital Time
Infrequently Answered Question #35: Why are there 24 hours in a day and 60 minutes in an hour? Why not a metric clock with 10 hours of 100 minutes or something?
A: These numbers come from the ancient Sumerians who counted in units of 12 with their fingers instead of ten. Which might have you wondering if Sumerians where six-fingered, 12-toed freaks or something. Not at all. They just saw the hand differently for counting.
Instead of seeing each finger (and the thumb) as one each, the Sumerians saw four fingers made of three bones each. By counting these segments you go up to twelve on one hand instead of ten on two. That's four fingers of three segments each, or 4x3=12 for the mathematically challenged.
In this method you don't count the thumb, you use it to indicate the segment you've counted to. To show seven the other way you extend seven digits on two hands as below left. In the Sumerian method to count seven you touch your thumb to the seventh segment on the tip of the ring finger as below right.
This leaves the other hand free for bigger numbers. In this case each of the four fingers represents a full four fingers of the other hand, or 12. This makes the index finger 12, the middle 24, the ring finger 36, and the pinky 48.
This way the highest number you get with Sumerian hand counting is 60. That's 48 on one hand plus the 12 on the other. That's why there's 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds per minute. The 24 hour day is 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night. All come from the Sumerian way of counting to twelve and sixty with the fingers.
If you think about it, a base twelve system is quite useful because it divides to whole numbers easily. Twelve hours divides in half (6), thirds (4), and quarters (3) evenly. Even better, 60 minutes divides in half (30), thirds (20), quarters (15), fifths (12), and sixths (10) evenly. Try that with 100 and you get 50, 33.3333..., 25, 20, and 16.666... respectively.
Sumerian counting also explains why there's 12 inches in a foot, as well as the size of an inch. Take a ruler and measure your index finger. If you're like me it's around three inches long with each segment being about one inch.
Of course, none of this explains why clocks have hands without any fingers at all. Unless it's a Mickey Mouse clock. But then, Mickey only has three fingers and a thumb. How many toes he has I can't say. I've never seen him without his shoes on. Besides, Mickey Mouse isn't Sumerian.
Another thing which I'm guessing might relate to this base 12 counting, the English words we use to count to twelve and then beyond. Notice we don't say oneteen, twoteen, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen..., nor maybe firsteen, seconteen, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.... We have unique words eleven, twelve and then start adding the teen suffix after that. So 1-12 are unique and beyond we start in with suffixes and prefixes, -teen, twenty-, thirty-, etc.
6/11/09 Rock in a Hard Place
Infrequently Answered Question #34: What's the difference between a meteor and a meteorite?
A: A meteor is a space rock flying through the air burning up. In other words a shooting star if you will. A meteorite is the same rock after hitting the ground. So, a meteor is a meteorite on the move, a meteorite is a meteor at rest on the ground.
It's like the difference between freeway traffic and a parking lot. Both are just a bunch of cars, only in one case they're on the move and in the other not. Though even at freeway speeds these cars rarely burst into flames like a meteor. Then again, when there is gridlock both groups of cars are basically unmoving. Those in the traffic jam have the addition of frustrated drivers hot under the collar behind the wheel. Which is still not hot enough to cause them to spontaneously combust like a meteor.
I think we've answered that well enough, now for a few stickier questions. What's the difference between a stone and a rock, a stick and a twig, and a bush and a shrub?
5/15/09 Help Wanted
Infrequently Answered Question #33: Where do evil masterminds get their army of nameless, faceless henchmen in jumpsuits? Who wants a job where the price of failure is not getting fired, but being jettisoned into a bottomless abyss or whirlpool of bubbling acid? Don't these potential employees know that when the evil plot goes south the leader's escape pod only has room for one?
A: To answer the first question, they get these folks from central casting. As for the rest, it's Hollywood, reality and logic don't really apply.
Though for my money one Hollywood bit of editing that makes less sense is how people carry on a conversation over a series of cuts over a period of hours. You know, person A asks a question while walking down the street, person B answers while they're riding in the car, person A responds while they're eating dinner, person B replies to that in the bar over drinks. How did this bit ever get started? This only works in the movies, but it would never happen in real life.
4/11/09 With Friends Like This...
Infrequently Answered Question #32: How is it possible WWII ended the Great Depression? Is war profitable?
A: Economically war is a losing proposition. History is littered with countries going bankrupt by waging war. War production builds things like tanks, planes, ammunition and warships that don't generate further wealth and are destroyed at an alarming rate. Bombing places and shooting people don't make you much money.
So then, why do they tell us the Big One pulled the US out of depression? Here's what I think.
The only way war is lucrative is by looting. This is how it generally worked in the past and WWII was no exception. Only the US didn't make out by looting Germany, Italy or Japan, as there wasn't that much left to loot after having the bejeezus bombed out of them. In this case America got rich by looting their allies, mainly Britain.
This was done by selling and leasing war material, which was paid for in cash up front. The British were almost bankrupted by the war and their gold reserves were very nearly depleted. Shortages and rationing continued in the UK after the war into the 50s and the country didn't fully recover from depression and war until the 60s. If war production was supposed to be a boon to the economy, it sure didn't work for England.
3/25/09 Odd Chance
Infrequently Answered Question #31: I've heard you're more likely to be struck by lightning ten times than to win the lottery. Yet people win the lottery all the time, but I don't hear of anyone getting hit by lightning ten times. What gives?
A: That's because they're calculating the odds of a single ticket winning the lottery. But who buys just one ticket? Thing is, you can increase your chances of winning by buying more chances.
Say to win the lottery you need five correct numbers from 1-40. Your chance of winning are one in 78,960,960. That's pretty long odds. If you buy ten tickets you improve your chances to ten in 78,960,960. If you buy 100 tickets... you get the idea.
On top of that, you aren't the only one playing the lottery. If ten million people each buy ten tickets the odds that there will be one winning ticket are about 100,000,000 in 78,960,960. Better than even odds that someone, though probably not you, will win.
I don't know what the odds of getting struck by lightning ten times are, but you can't increase the chances unless you create more of yourself. If there were a thousand you clones, the chances go up. But that's you as a collection, not a single you or any one of your clones. Either that or you have to be in a thousand places at once. What are the chances of that?
Then again, the first lightning strike may kill you. Then you'd be dead and buried or cremated. Which would make another bolt hitting you pretty unlikely.
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