Inspired by someone’s query in a CS thread about the equivalence of mass and weight. I won’t link to it because I don’t wish to embarrass the other poster, or, for that matter, myself if my answer was insufficiently rigorous.
Anyway…there are but three rules here.
Poster A asks a question about a scientific, technical, or historical issue s/he does not know the answer to but has always feared voicing for fear of sounding stupid.
Poster B answers the question and then posts his/her own.
No one mocks the previous poster(s), though corrections & emendations are welcome.
Okay?
Now, in response to this
I wrote this
Now my own incredibly stupid question:
I can never remember…in the American Civil War/War of Northern Aggression, which side was blue and which was grey?
The South was grey, the North was blue. However, by the end of the war the South was mostly butternut, and there were always crazy-ass regiments that didn’t follow a strict blue-grey thing.
ETA - “War of Northern Aggression” isn’t really said by almost anybody in the South seriously, unless possibly they’re talking about Reconstruction. “War Between the States”, yes.
I’m in Tennessee, dear, and sought to forestall the inevitable complaint from somebody in Mississippi. :D. And, um, you forgot to ask your own stupid question.
I have no answers for anyone as I am expert at nothing, but I will ask a stupid question:
I have it in my head that it is really bad form to walk into any type of business establishment while still wearing a motorcycle helmet. Although I have no idea where I got this from, I’m convinced that people will think I’m trying to rob them if I do this. Is there any validity to this, or am I just paranoid?
Macroeconomics is about economy-wide phenomona, such as inflation, unemployment, and economic growth (GDP, monetary policy, interest rates etc)
Microeconomics is about individual economies - economics at the level of housholds or firms. Included topics are stuff like cost-benefit analyses, marginal rates of return, even stuff like effects of rent control or school attendance, or foreign competition.
My stupid question: what the hell is “treacle”, and how do you pronounce it?
“Treacle” is molasses, a byproduct of the sugar making industry. It’s darker than “golden syrup” and lighter than “blackstrap molasses” and it’s the stuff sold in the USA as “Molasses”. You use it in baking, mostly. It’s pronounced “TREE-kuhl”
My stupid question: When a red blood cell is made, it’s made from a stem cell with a nucleus. The nucleus is “ejected” during the process and a red blood cell, of course, has no nucleus. So what the heck happens to the billions of nuclei spat out in the production of red blood cells every day? Are they vacuumed up by phagocytes and recycled? Collected for posterity? Wandering around in my bone marrow searching for their long lost cytoplasm?
WhyNot I don’t think yours counts as a stupid question :). I haven’t actually studied this, but I would think they are phagocytosed and digested. C’mon try harder for something stupid!
Someone once said, “There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers.” And (IMHO) none of the questions here have been stupid, just as none of the answers have been stupid.
I asked my biology (Human Anatomy and Physiology, to be precise) and she stopped short, blinked at me a few times and said, “I have…no idea…No one’s ever asked me that before…” I told her I’d try to find out and report back, but it seemed too stupid a question for its own thread!
Sorry, I’ll try again…Um…How come ball point pens won’t write on paper if it’s lying on a glass countertop? I’ve always got to shove a magazine or something under the paper first…
**WhyNot **I’ve done some googling and all I can tell you (which you probably already know) is that the pores in bones are sized so that red-blood cells with nuclei can’t fit through, so the nucleus never leaves the marrow. Is it consumed by white blood cells within the marrow? Don’t know, but I can’t imagine what else would happen to it.
Here’s mine - are light waves and radio waves really the same thing but at different wavelengths? What *is *a radio wave? Is it energy?
Light waves are photons and radio waves are electro-magnetic particles. Same thing but made of different stuff. Kind of like a pigskin football and a Nerf football.
I probably got that wrong.
Here’s a truly stoopid question: What’s up with black people and suntans/sunburns?
Absolutely. I’m definitely not the darkest guy out there, but during the summer, there is a very clear band of lighter skin underneath where my watch lives.
It’s because the Midwest used to be the Northwestern Territory, back before there was any part of the US west of the Mississippi. The Northwestern Territory became Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, but it was still thought of as being towards the west as the US expanded, until the term “Midwest” stuck.
And it is west of the Appalachians, which were the first boundary to western expansion of the US.
In order for a ballpoint pen to write, the ball part of it has to roll on the surface. Since there’s some friction in the ball-pen interface to overcome, it’s much easier to write on a surface that will compact a bit and form around the ball. A single sheet of paper on glass will compact a very little, but not much. You’ll have to press very hard to write on it.
Both visible light and radio waves are composed of photons. Radio waves are longer wavelength (lower energy) than the light we can see, but it’s fundamentally the same sort of thing. See Wikipedia page on Electromagnetic Spectrum Microwaves and X-rays are also just different frequencies of EM radiation.
I never knew that re ballpoint pens. Thanks.
And black people can and do sunburn. Having seen a bad sunburn on a very dark complected African America, I say it looks painful. Imagine dark pink sort of showing through a deep chocolate brown. He was hurting and needed care (day at the dunes in mid summer).
I have a stupid question:
I am now seeing ads on FB and elsewhere that say, “earn up to $672 a day!” Must know how to type.
Is this some kind of Ponzi scheme or similar? And what could they have you doing? (I’m not about to sign up, but I’ve never known what these jobs entail).
The other ones say stuff like “get your stimulus package now!” and promise lots of money (usually a cute girl holding a check). What are these ads? Who answers them?
I asked my biology (Human Anatomy and Physiology, to be precise) and she stopped short, blinked at me a few times and said, “I have…no idea…No one’s ever asked me that before…” I told her I’d try to find out and report back, but it seemed too stupid a question for its own thread!