A place for factual questions and Ask the Expert threads.
So British beaches are all covered with these cute little stripy beach huts, which AFAIK are descended from the old bathing machines. Then after a while it became more acceptable to actually walk across the beach in your bathing attire, and so the...
Sometimes when I am letting water drain out of my bathtub, the water will suddenly stop draining, and the toilet will start bubbling. This goes on for 2-3 seconds, and then the bath starts draining again. What is going on? It is not really a...
From the edge of my backyard, the ground slopes down into a railroad right-of-way, and some previous inhabitants of my house (built 1938) used that slope as their private garbage dump. Now I'm clearing brush from it and becoming closely acquainted...
Fighting with a weapon in each hand is common in fantasy games and fiction. Was it ever done in real life? I don't mean using a weapon designed for off-hand use like a maingauche, jitte or sai but using two roughly equal weapons at the same time. If...
I've read about people being "written up" at work in the US. It seems not to be tied to particular workplaces but be a generic formal thing. What exactly is it? What are the requirements and consequences? Is it regulated by law or is it a local...
A shop around the corner for me is selling off cans of Red Bull Cola for less than half price, because the sell-by date on the bottom of the can is 21st of March, and they have a lot of stock. What happens to the cola after the 21st of March? Can...
In the past 24 hours I've gotten 2 calls on my cell from a telemarketer. It was the sort where they say "Your auto warranty may have expired, there's still time to renew it, press 1 to be connected with an operator!" I want to file a complaint. ...
A coworker, who grew up in Russia and Israel, just asked me this. I have to say, I have no idea. Why do we have middle names? Why do some cultures have none, and others have multiple? Why do we look at people funny if they have either no or more...
So, according to today's edition of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, if you're going to build something like a factory, you have to hire someone to check the area out to make sure there's no elves in the area before you can build. (And I thought we...
Watching an Oz episode reminded me of something I've wondered about. A supposedly classic murder method is to put finely ground glass in someone's food. Does this work, or do the pieces have to be big enough that they'll be noticed by the victim? If...
According to the Wiki article on the LHC, one of the things the collider will do, is smash lead nuclei into one another. Given that atomic nuclei are generally not found rolling around in nature, these have to be created somehow. How's it done?
As a kid, dog muck that had been outside for a couple of weeks turned a white colour. However, I've not seen a white dog log for years. First, why did the dog muck turn white in the first place, and second, why has it totally disappeared? ...
What are the advantages/disadvantages of planes with delta wings? Why were so few planes built with them (Vulcan, Concorde, F106, etc.), compared to other wing types?
Here's a photo of the license plate Ohio gives to those convicted of driving under the influence. http://farm1.static.flickr.com/59/18921 ... e3.jpg?v=0 Here's a standard issue New Mexico license plate. ...
I don't know, but I'd suspect that with the economy in a nosedive, companies which sell automation gear for businesses would be booming right now. It would certainly enable them to cut a bunch more employees from the payrolls. So, anybody know? ...
You know how on a PC, when you mouse over a ink, you can see where the link goes? Can Safari be made to do that?
In celebration of St. Paddy's Day, the local supermarkets are just about giving packages of corned beef away (1.69. lb), so I'm buying a refrigeratorful of the stuff. I was planning to cook it all this week, and then when I get sick of eating it, to...
Some kids skip a grade in school. What research has been done that looks at the effect this has on the kids, both in the short term (i.e., while they're still in grade school) and the long term (i.e., after they've graduate grade school)?
Just a question that occured to me - if you go without brushing for a little while, then brush your teeth, why do your gums bleed? Not that this happens to me anymore - but as a kid, I was a terrible brusher.
On another message board, one hot topic is membership fees versus ads and the revenue potential of each. It seems the powers that be there have determined that the latter is more profitable than the former. I don't dispute that, but my question...
Can anyone advise me how to swap the behavior of the caps lock and enter key under Windows? I want my caps lock key to execute the enter function, and the physical enter key to toggle caps lock. Why, you ask? I am a hard typist and I think I'm...
As long as the friction of the wheels turning does not exceed the thrust of the propeller, eventually, the plane will reach takeoff speed. Your thoughts?
I play on the computer. I close the browser and go away for an hour with the computer up and running and when I come back, my browser cannot connect to the net. FireFox, AOHell when launched will not connect. Opera, IE, nada.... I can reboot...
Can anyone help me clarify the (likely) impact of Obama's energy tax policies? A friend is quoting www.americansforprosperity.org, who says age 21 of the Obama budget proposal highlights his cap-and-trade proposal: After enactment of the...
I was reading that testosterone concentration in the womb correlates quite closely with mathematical, and general problem solving, ability (an indirect marker being the lengths of the second and fourth digits). First, is this accurate? Second,...
Hi all, I was hoping to get an answer for a floor tiling question. I've had a tiler in my house laying some floor tiles for the last...4...5...6.... seems like forever...days. He has been very slow, turning up late almost every day, and not...
In an airliner, the sliding shades for passenger windows have to be opened for takeoff and landing. Why is that?
Nothing good, obviously, because the machine fails to finish booting properly. I did a security update for Windows (XP), it required the machine to be rebooted, and when it did, instead of booting up, I got the sound of a British police siren. ...
I haven't done any deep studies of this or anything, but it seems like the bigger an animal is, the smaller its eyes are relative to its body. Elephants have beady little eyes compared to their lumbering frames and tiny critters have huge eyes. Is...
For those who aren't aware, Hulu is a streaming, ad-supported online TV service that carries quite a few TV shows, but typically only has the last 5 or so episodes of any one show, and perhaps a few earlier episodes. It works pretty well, fairly...
Ok, I guess I can understand why my 32 gig ipod is only 29.56 gigs.. A couple gigs for the system and such. Quite a bit for what it does, what? Some nifty left right slide graphics? Meh, but I've heard its bloatware anyway so whatever. But why...
We're just in the process of putting down a new bamboo hardwood floor in our living room, and we're finding that we have some largish cracks between the boards. Is there a way to fill these cracks so they aren't so conspicuous?
So I filed long ago, and I helped her respond, so I can't file default. She has since stated that she won't sign the uncontested divorce, and I don't want her to anyway, as she solidly deserves half of the debt we are in. She has now, as of...
I started my computer up today and opened Firefox, only to find that the fonts on most web pages look strange, as if they have been emboldened. Here is picture of what it looks like. I tried decreasing my zoom and my font size just to see if that...
Jesus Christ, this is annoying. Everyone I know is annoyed to death by this shitty "feature." What in God's name is this for, and how can I disable it?
...or do we just think that they do? My wife's ancestors came mostly from Italy. It is a common thing in her family to joke about how Italians and their descendants commonly wave their hands a lot when they speak. I have to say I have noticed...
Are young Italian American males like this an oddity, or is this a widespread subculture?
I've upgraded recently to Internet Explorer 8 recently. One thing I've noticed that I've finally had enough of is that the bottom of the window doesn't have that toolbar thing that IE 7 had. I'm talking about where it displays the link address when...
I've always heard that it's wrong to screen a movie without showing credits, some sort of licensing issue. Even when they chop the hell out of movies to show them on tv, they don't skip the credits. They do speed them up quite a bit, particularly on...
I didn't want to hijack the Reagan thread in CH, so I'll start this instead. Rock Hudson, for one, probably did not get AIDS from anal sex. From what I have read, he was a top (I'll explain that if the term is new to you), which means he's not...
Has anyone successfully learned Russian as a second language? I am attempting to do so using the Rosetta Stone software, and whilst I am making decent progress it's not proving much use for me at work. I have gotten all the Cyrillic characters...
I got this awesome watch last year for my birthday: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001PC1RS6/ref=asc_df_B001PC1RS6736763/?tag=yahoo-jewelry-20&creative=380333&creativeASIN=B001PC1RS6&linkCode=asn#moreAboutThisProduct But the strap immediately got a...
My washing machine just broke I have a upright Kenmore washing machine that’s about 2 years old. It’s one of the lower to middle models they offered at the time. About a month ago it started making a loud screeching noise during the agitate phase...
Well I had an ipod touch.. Just bought it a couple months ago, actually. Well one day at work it fell out of my pocket (scrubs have big pockets and I'm always up and down and bending over and moving stuff). F*CK. A coworker, one of at least 20,...
(Interested in answers for both the US and UK.) Is there any limit on the proximity of speed cameras? What's to stop the police creating a rat run of 50 speed cameras and hitting a motorist with 50 separate fines for speeding?
Can anyone explain how rubbing your hands on stainless steel under running water can get rid of garlic or onion odors? I've tried googling it, but the only hits I've found sound like guesswork. Note: I'm not actually certain it does remove odors...
Basically, I have Win XP Pro on IDE 0 (C:) and Debian Linux on IDE 1 (D:). GRUB, from the Linux install, currently has a hold of my MBR on IDE 0, so that when I boot up, I see GRUB's OS selection screen. I want to boot straight to Windows. Nevermind...
I used to manipulate photos when I had a PC. Since I got the Mac I haven't. I've got iPhoto and HP Photosmart Edit. I don't have many pictures of me, but I found one I like and tried to crop it to fit the 6 Kb limit. It started out as 20 Kb. ...
Is there a known reason for this? My great aunt could still remember things from her youth, but not something she did yesterday. Are the memories stored differently in the brain, or is it for some other reason?
Does the reconstruction of languages, such as proto-Indo European, serve any practical use, or is it purely academic? Is it possible to work backwards from known related languages, to a protolanguage like PIE, then work forward again to some...
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