Unanswerable questions

Goatboy

Full Member
Jan 31, 2005
14,956
18
Scotland
Why do folks worry about the health warnings on cigarettes? I only buy ones that warn of "low birth weights" or "impotence" as I don't want kids anyway. That way I avoid getting "throat cancer" or "dying younger".
 

stonehippo

Forager
May 15, 2011
167
1
Birmingham
Why do folks worry about the health warnings on cigarettes? I only buy ones that warn of "low birth weights" or "impotence" as I don't want kids anyway. That way I avoid getting "throat cancer" or "dying younger".
Ah - I see that you adhere to the following philosophy-
Eat healthily, exercise regularly, DIE ANYWAY.
 

santaman2000

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jan 15, 2011
16,909
1,120
68
Florida
Ah - I see that you adhere to the following philosophy-
Eat healthily, exercise regularly, DIE ANYWAY.

I'll try to pose my response to this as one of those unanswerable questions:

If it's supposedly healthier to eat all natural foods (organic, non GMO vegetables and meat raised with natural grains and no antibiotics) then why do all the obituaries say, "died of natural causes?
 

Goatboy

Full Member
Jan 31, 2005
14,956
18
Scotland
Why in the movies do the saboteurs sneak 'round a base in deep tension as they do there best not to betray their presence and plant explosive charges that "beep" on activation and have a flashing that merrily glows away in the darkness like a Christmas decoration?


(Hmm maybe it's because all guards on the badies side are blind and deaf by contract! They never see the goodies 'till it's too late.)
 

Goatboy

Full Member
Jan 31, 2005
14,956
18
Scotland
Again in movies, when a spaceship/plane/helicopter is going down, does it always go behind the hill and then explode? What's waiting there? It must be powerful and dangerous. I think we should be told.


Not in fiction but where do wire coat hangers come from? I've never met someone who works in the industry or heard of a factory! And even if you only leave one in a cupboard, when you go back a few weeks later there are more! They're breading I tell you, they're gathering information before attaining world domination... (Now where's my tinfoil hat?)
 

FKeate

Forager
Jun 12, 2014
103
0
London
Not in fiction but where do wire coat hangers come from? I've never met someone who works in the industry or heard of a factory! And even if you only leave one in a cupboard, when you go back a few weeks later there are more! They're breading I tell you, they're gathering information before attaining world domination... (Now where's my tinfoil hat?)

An ex girlfriend of mine went to school with the daughter of the man who invented the wire coat hanger. He makes about 0.000000001 pence per hanger and is now insanely wealthy.
 
Feb 18, 2012
534
10
Bedfordshire
On the basis of the fact that all living things wish to progress is, cheese the great leap forward from milk? And if so is yoghurt a bit Neanderthal? Just saying like! No offence, meant.
 

santaman2000

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jan 15, 2011
16,909
1,120
68
Florida
An ex girlfriend of mine went to school with the daughter of the man who invented the wire coat hanger. He makes about 0.000000001 pence per hanger and is now insanely wealthy.

Being as how wire coat hangers have been in common use here for well over a century, he must be incredibly old as well. :D
 

BlueTrain

Nomad
Jul 13, 2005
482
0
78
Near Washington, D.C.
While I was spending several hours in the Frankfurt airport a few weeks ago, it occurred to me that although the wheel has been around for probably five thousand years, more or less, it only occurred to someone to put wheels on luggage maybe twenty or thirty years ago. Then it occurred to the airlines to charge extra for your bags.

On the subject of food, there are probably some foods you'd be better off not knowing anything about how they're made, including sausage, grits, and for a few sensitive individuals, everything else. And currently, my definition of natural or organic means that it contains no petroleum products or at least no more than the government standard. Also, what happens when sour cream goes bad? Does it start to taste sweet? Or doesn't it ever last that long?

I don't know about holes in cannon but the engine that powered the Wright Flyer was built entirely from scratch by one man, their mechanic. Could any of you do that? I have also read that you could build a brand-new Morris Minor from the spare parts catalog, that is, if you wanted to. And speaking of cannon, I think rockets are older than cannon.
 

Goatboy

Full Member
Jan 31, 2005
14,956
18
Scotland
While I was spending several hours in the Frankfurt airport a few weeks ago, it occurred to me that although the wheel has been around for probably five thousand years, more or less, it only occurred to someone to put wheels on luggage maybe twenty or thirty years ago. Then it occurred to the airlines to charge extra for your bags.

I think the reason it wasn't done too much earlier was that the road surfaces weren't up to allowing little wheels to move over them, either being too rough or muddy. You often see travelers turn up somewhere a little more "rural" and struggle with their wheeled luggage.
 
Nov 29, 2004
7,808
26
Scotland
"...Were it not for war we would probably still be sitting around and picking lice off each other..."

There is an Ian Banks novel where one of the characters loves to play a world building computer game, something like Civilisation. At some point having become distracted by the ongoing plot of the book he returns to his game and having conquered much of Europe by the 1400's erased all heretical faiths from history, built his new model army that makes good use of his most recent invention 'the wheel lock musket', he is alerted to arrival of the steam powered ironclad battleships of the Zimbabwean Empire, the game then ends and he loses to the computer game which had been building its own empires around the world.

Why did this bit of the world, Europe, end up being the bit that did all the colonising, conquering and exploiting? I think that there is an argument to be made that all these little kingdoms at each others throats, no more than a week or twos ride from each other probably did force people to 'think different', but there other things that came into play.

I once read that development of fine crockery and glassware eventually led to advances in lens design and ultimately cheap spectacles. This increased the useful life of tradesmen and scholars and added about a decade to the working life of each.
 
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