How thin pieces of metal can keep a space shuttle from burning to a cynder.
Despite thinking about these things deeply…
*I never understood why something breaking the sound barrier would cause a “sonic boom.”
*I never understood why Chinese Take Out places could remember every condiment, every time, without fail, and yet American fast food restaurants can’t remember to give you even one condiment half the time.
*I never understood why something that is 10 x 10 is 100 square feet, but something that is 12 x 8 is only 96. I took off two feet from one side, and I added it to the other, but I have less square feet!?
*AOL
Telephones (and faxes and email) just amaze me.
The fact that I can just pick up the phone and dial a bunch of numbers and talk to Mr. Long Duc Dong in Guang Cho China just blows my mind. I have no idea how it works.
Politics. ( I will never waste more than 15 minutes a year on trying to understand this ever changing subject. (0 percent of politics is deciding who to blame.)
Email - The fact that we have more and more ways to communicate and less and less to say. All the dumb jokes, urban legends and FWD x 100 sappy feel good stories all come to mind.
Jazz. Don’t get it. Add Rap to that as well.
Melanie Griffith’s ability to stay in hollywood despite the fact she cannot act and she sounds like a betsy wetsy doll.
Why the accordian is not a more popular instrument.
Apparantly, at least part of the word “No”… 
HeeHee
I briefly dated a PolySci major in college, very briefly.
After I explained my idea for Presidential elections (whoever wants to be Preident just runs for it alone, no running mates; whoever gets the most votes is Prez, whoever gets the second-most votes is VP…makes perfect sense to me), he dropped me like a hot potato.
I wonder why?
You did not take 2 feet off one side and add it to the other. You’re taking off 20 square feet and adding only 16 square feet.
Something is 10x10. Now you take off 20 square feet (2x10) when you change it to 10x8. Now you try to make up for it by making it 12x8. You are not adding another 20 square feet, you are adding only 16 square feet (2x8). So 10x10 = 100 sq feet and 12x8 = 96 square feet.
Luckily, I’m not human. I’m a scientist. Try here: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/tides.html
I need to punch it up a bit, but the explanation is basically correct.
i do not understand algebra, american football, the appeal of beer and barbecue, and strip clubs.
i also do not understand why my friends always want me to skive off work and then want me to pay for stuff.
and why do so many people call off of work on the weekend? what is so magical about the weekend?
Beavis and Butthead, and the people who actually liked it. Not once in its entire run did I ever find anything even remotely enjoyable about it. Basically, I thought it was an incredibly crude shoestring-budget hack attempt by MTV to “cash in” on the primetime animation “craze”. I’m especially miffed as to why practically the only people besides me to ever criticize it are the same reactionary buffoons who think Mortal Kombat is the work of the Devil.
Statistics. How can a science with almost no practical value be so frikkin hard? I hammered away at this subject for an entire summer course, and everything beyond rejecting the null and bell curves passed way over my head.
The entire goddam American public education system. How violent assaults and open disrespect for any and all rules are considered normal is beyond me.
Why the XFL failed, but the WWF is still flying high.
The entire goddam home video game industry. In my lifetime, I have seen one great Nintendo system discontinued in favor of an “advanced” system that wasn’t advanced at all, said advanced system get swamped with political hysteria which killed about 90% of its good games, nearly everything Sega ever did go belly-up, SNK let its grossly overpriced system wither and die, and Sony develop its “state-of-the-art” Playstation with the speed of a tectonic place, the result being that it’s still less available than the now hopelessly-obsolete system that preceded it. And we’re worried about the ARCADES being in trouble??
How the media can blather on and on and on about Tiger Woods even when he’s eight strokes behind the leader and not even threateaning the top twenty.
Taken from Esquire: “The idea that Tiger Woods’ success in an insanely expensive sport requiring miles of immaculately manufactured lawns is actually going to influence urban black kids living ten to a room.”
Why Pete Sampras and Jeff Gordon, two of the finest athletes of my generation, get so much criticism.
Why anyone who claims to read Playboy for the articles is subject to endless ridicule. For the record, yes, I’ve read a few issues, and there are articles in there. Heck, there’d better be for how much they charge per issue. Note that I never once read Playboy JUST for the articles. I mean, c’mon, you think I’m stupid or something?
Daylight Savings Time. Exactly how does this save money or make things easier for schoolkids?
The fact that you have to get a car’s insurance, registration, and safety check separately even though all three are required to legally use the vehicle. Even worse, you need to have a current registration to pass the safety check. Good lord, there’s enough red tape here to FILL a car.
How the chances of a presidential candidate winning the election somehow became the single most important factor in deciding which candidate to vote for. :mad:
How Buffalo Bill got his name in Silence of the Lambs. Clarice says something like it was because he used to skin his humps, but I do not get that at all. I’ve been ignorant about this for, like a year. I have some ideas, but I doubt if they are good ones.
Quantum Mechanics
I have a degree in Chemistry, and I swear that I only passed this class because no one else got it either.
When you get into class on the first day, and the Professor says:“I hope none of you have taken Classical Mechanics because it all breaks down on this level.”
It makes me say: “HUH?!”
So I have come to the conclusion that it is all just MAGIC!
I’ll never understand why MTV stopped showing videos and started making all kinds of crappy TV “shows” full of spoiled and whining 20-somethings.
And furthermore, I don’t understand why they still have that “I wanna be an MTV V-J” contest when they don’t need more V-J’s.
Icing.
No, not the kind on cakes.
I think this is a sexual orientation thing. I have had a number of straight friends try to explain icing to me. It won’t “stick”, then again, nothing else about hockey makes the least bit of sense to me either - especially this belief that somehow shouting loudly in a bar at a hockey game being televised will somehow affect the outcome of the game (frequently being played in another city).
Andy Warhol.
Did he do anything origional or did he just color in the lines of other people’s stuff and paint soup label portraits?
I thought of another one: Tom Green. I do not understand why anyone would think this man is funny. I have had people who will try to explain why he is funny, but I still don’t get it. I have seen his show. It isn’t funny. He’s obnoxious. I’ve seen the one where he puts a statue of two people having sex on his parents’ front lawn. This is not funny. It’s mean, and I don’t understand why his parents go along with it (and they must, since I’m pretty sure he couldn’t put them on TV without their permission.)
And I have no idea what Drew Barrymore must have been thinking…
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- I do not understand how a bug can make its butt light up,
or how such an amazing thing could ever come to be. - MC
- I do not understand how a bug can make its butt light up,
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Why my mind gets all fuzzy and laggy when I get tired. 
Ethilrist, just for a change of pace, go watch REQUIEM FOR A DREAM.
As for the musical taste questions, well that’s easily summed up with “different strokes for different folks”. It also helps if you can distinguish between musical forms and musical content.
I have long since resigned myself to the fact that I will never instanly grasp the difference between right and left without making a “L” out of my left thumb and left hand.
I also don’t understand how time and space can be defined to together as being “elastic”. I keep trying to wrap my head around it and it doesn’t work. But I’m always close enough to keep trying.
And don’t even get me started on the quantum stuff, which I’ll get when it’s told to me and then promptly forget.
Many things mystify me. I still do not, and will likely never understand:
Why teeth are basically designed to rot out of your head from the get-go.
White boys who try to rap.
Why men adore breasts so much, if you had two lumps of fat like that anywhere else, they would be repulsed.
Just about all the concepts of chemistry. Orbitals? WTF? Where are these, exactly? How are there elements that explode when exposed to oxygen? Where do you keep them? How have they lasted this long?
Most of math. Oh, imaginary numbers. WTF!?!?!? Imaginary? Is that what my imaginary friend should use to count with? What dreck. I understand probability, but I don’t understand why it is useful. Let’s say the chances are three out of six. Well, great, but you are likely to be one of the left-out three. Or, perhaps not. So what have you really learned?
How those little grooves on a record, scratched correctly with a needle, produce music.
The stock market.
Wrestling.
Why people have the end of their cats toes chopped off, otherwise known as declawing. I’m also mystified how someone can be cruel to an animal.
How anybody ever lived in the southern US before air conditioning.
Why people believe that a celebrity asking you to help will make you give more to a charity. Get the celebrity to part with a few of their millions, and go home.
Why so much money is spent trying to identify every freaking bug and fern frond all over the freaking planet when there are people starving to death and others not receiving a quality education.
Don’t even get me started on why anyone cares about space travel.
Oh, and why anyone likes Dave Matthews.
I promise that I absolutely do not mean this as a slam. Isn’t Jeff Gordon a racecar driver? I don’t understand car racing as a sport. I understand that is exciting to watch, that people like to follow particular drivers, etc. I understand that driving the cars, navigating, strategy, etc., requires a lot of skill. Can someone explain to me the athletic ability that is required? Endurance?