# What do you STILL not understand? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 4, 2001, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-still-not-understand/71208 "2001-07-04T14:12:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![DKW](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dkw/32/3118_2.png) [@DKW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DKW)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2001, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-still-not-understand/71208/101 "2001-07-10T22:42:37Z")
D Marie - They control insanely powerful machines at speeds far greater than we could even attempt and compete against many other such machines. On a closed track. For five hundred miles. Good enough for me. (Hey, I can barely control a _chainsaw_.) Back to the OP… International law. As far as I’m concerned, until we have an international government, this is hokum. (And no, the UN is not an international government.) How this ever became the justification to fight Saddam Hussein, I’ll never know. Chinese culture. All of it. For that matter, any language that does not have an alphabet. Screw how “beautiful” it is, I like writing I can actually use. How some plants can thrive and grow for years without any care whatsoever, while others croak if you neglect them for two freaking days. How hockey players can pound the daylights out of each other for a whole game and still be healthy for the next contest, whearas some baseball players are laid up for weeks after taking one bad step. Macroeconomics. Like statistics, except with more to memorize. Sheesh, the _President_ probably doesn’t know half this stuff. (Of course, considering the kind of Presidents we’ve had lately…) SUV’s. A van has more cargo space, a pickup has more weight capacity, and just about anything is safer. If it’s style you’re after, a similarly-priced sports car is a helluva lot better choice. Why someone hasn’t designed a decent motorcycle horn so they don’t have to make more noise than a freaking firing range for “safety” reasons. Computer games. Don’t even boot up right as often as not, ridiculously hard, increasingly-hideous requirements, and invariably full of bugs. Is there any other group of people on the planet who’d put up with this crap? ---
**Author:** ![Jeannie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e480ec/32.png) [@Jeannie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeannie)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2001, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-still-not-understand/71208/102 "2001-07-11T00:20:28Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mangetout \* > \*\*Calculus > > You know, integration/differentiation. > > I swear that the maths teacher must have called all the other kids aside the week before and told them _“Look, I’m going to pretend to explain something incomprehensible next week, why don’t you all pretend to understand and we’ll see that poor **Mangetout** squirm”_ \*\* I think you had the same Calculus teacher that I had. I’m pretty sure the teacher made that stuff up as he went along. How he got the whole rest of the class to go along with it for a whole year is beyond me. ---
**Author:** ![AtomicDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ac91a4/32.png) [@AtomicDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AtomicDog)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2001, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-still-not-understand/71208/103 "2001-07-11T22:16:52Z")
How the loser of an election became President. And why this wasn’t fixed the first time it happened. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2001, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-still-not-understand/71208/104 "2001-07-11T23:41:55Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by AtomicDog \* > **How the loser of an election became President.** Rehnquist wants to retire, O’Connor wants to retire, Scalia wants Rehnquist to retire so he can be Chief Justice, Thomas does whatever Rehnquist wants, and Kennedy figured he could hide behind the other four. Never mind that they had to create a ruling with no legal precedent, or that they had to all contradict their previous judicial rulings and individual philosophies – dammit, they wanted Dubya in office, so they stuck him there. ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2001, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-still-not-understand/71208/105 "2001-07-12T01:05:37Z")
A degree in Physics, tons of Electronics and circuit labs, math out the wazoo, and a professional engineer…I still just don’t get _imaginary numbers_. I even tutored math for a while, I eventually had to develop my stock reply “Look, anything else from differential equations to quantum mechanics to relativity I’ll be happy to explain to you. Just don’t ever speak of this chapter of the textbook again…” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-still-not-understand/71208.md?page=5)