Why are monocles associated with rich people? You’d think half a pair of glasses would be something people with not enough money to buy a whole pair would buy.
I’ve asked this before but. . . why is fish not meat? And why is Europe a continent?
I’ve got ads blocked at home but not at work. Why are the tailored ads always for a site I’ve just been on? That seems stupid to me. I was just at Roaman’s, I’ve already had my fill of fat lady clothes from that shop. Wouldn’t it make more sense to show ads for The Avenue or maybe Diet Coke?
I’d like for someone to answer my dumb questions. And to add dumb questions of their own. Come on-- ask the questions that are too dumb to ask non-anonymously.
I’ve got this one. Answer: Religion!
In the past this tradition has lead to rather interesting definitions of ‘fish’.
I think it was just a fashion item for the dandies at the end of the 18th century. That’s what I associate it with: someone emphasising appearance, showing off, OTT. Fashion doesn’t really make sense, I suppose. Perhaps it became a fashion because even having one would show that you were wealthy? Because they were from the same time as top hats we associate the two now. Also, poor people would’ve had nothing, not half a pair of glasses. IANAMonocleExpert…
It might be, or it might not be. Here is cool, short video that explains continents, but don’t expect to get any answers…
I’ll be back with a stupid question when the next one pops up… 
Because Europe lies north of the Mediterranean sea. Asia lies east of it and Africa south of it. To the west, there’s nothing but the open ocean. Continents have been defined quite long ago.
They want you to come back. Most people don’t buy online in a single visit. They’ll look, maybe bookmark things or add them to a cart, then go look at some other sites before they decide.
Will you look at that! I’m too stupid to understand the answer. What’s worse, I’m the only one with stupid questions. Shoulda kept quiet.
But those are good stupid questions. I don’t know the answer about monocles, but I would add that they were inconvenient and required more fussing with than spectacles, so in order to make good use of one, you had to have the leisure to fuss with it. How’s that?
I think a better explanation of Europe being a continent is something like this: Eurasia is a land mass, and there seems to be a natural division between Europe and Asia: the Ural Mountains down to the Caspian Sea, and then across the Caucasus to the Black Sea. This is fairly arbitrary, but for Europeans it made sense.
I will now try to think of some stupid questions of my own.
Roddy
You are not the only one with stupid questions. I had one just yesterday but am now too stupid to remember it! I’ll be back if I ever think of it.
When there is a knock on the door, everyone in the room turns and looks at the door. Why?
Europe is a continent for mainly cultural reasons, rather than purely physical. Europe, Asia, and Africa were terms coined by the Greeks, and it makes sense in that context: both Asia and Africa are on the other side of a body of water. It makes sense, and as more land was brought into the public consciousness, they began to be mapped to those three categories. This Greco-Roman construction of the continents was much later conflated with Victorian theories of race, which created a smaller Europe defined in racial/cultural terms (e.g. Tony Blair didn’t consider Kosovo to be in Europe). I’m not an expert in this by any means, and I’m pretty much just summarizing Lewis and Wigen’s The Myth of Continents, which is more competently summarized here.
Ah ha! This makes sense to my easily confused brain. Maybe my question should have been define “continent”.
The people turn to look at the door because that’s where the noise came from. At least that’s why I do it.
I can think of one person who has made a career of asking questions too stupid for GQ (and who apparently still can’t use Google or Wikipedia.) It’s bad form to criticize another poster, so I can’t id him by name, and I don’t want to, uh. . . hex my relatively good standing here.
Some pretty good dumb questions here. I’ve learned a lot so far.
Here’s my contribution: If dust is made up of mostly human skin cells and dust mites, why are places that have been long abandoned by people represented as being full of dust?
Because with a monocle, you could look like the Planters Peanuts mascot!
Obviously.
There is no geophysical definition of “continent” under which Europe qualifies. (At any rate, India would qualify as a separate continent better than Europe does.) As has been said, Europe is considered a continent purely for cultural and historic reasons.
Under the classification used in Latin America, North and South America are a single continent (“America,”), and “Oceania” is also a continent.
Because you want to see who’s there when the door gets opened.
The better question is why people look out the window when they hear thunder.
People do this even when it’s been raining for a while so it’s not like they heard the thunder and want to see the rain. They heard the thunder and clearly want to see it or see the lightening even though it happened a few seconds earlier. Actually, I think with both the door and the thunder it’s just common to look in the direction of a noise.
As I was typing this my dogs started barking and I looked towards them…they’re outside in the backyard. I’d have to be able to see through [counts] 3 walls to see them AND I know exactly what they’re barking at. It’s just the neighbor dog…no big deal, not even worth lifting my head.
Indeed. But that article fails to mention by far my favorite Catholic “fish” - the delicious ( or not ) laurex.
Why aren’t shoe sizes standardized? 42? 26? 8 1/2D? 10 1/4? 7? Depending on where you are, these could all be the same size.
Why don’t all countries use the same electrical outlet designs?
Why do traffic lights use red and green when that’s the most common form of colorblindness? I recommend switching to red for stop and blue for go.
I mean that continents were named during the antiquity, by people who viewed the Mediterranean Sea as the center of their world. They would have had no clue about where exactly the dividing lines were, but had called the lands according to their position relative to the Mediterranean Sea. The lands north of the sea were Europe, the lands east of it Asia, the lands south of it Africa.
It wasn’t about land masses (they wouldn’t have known their limits) but about relative positions.