What is the significance of the gavel in a courtroom? How did it originate? —Adams WE’RE not too sure where the word gavel comes from, much less the path by […]
Extras
The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams, crossword by Matt Jones, News of The Weird
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Will bacteriophages save us from the antibiotics crisis?
Worldwide, we’re already losing 700,000 people a year to infections that won’t respond to antibiotics
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What’s the environmental impact of road salt?
Roadways being designed to repel water and drain it off, salt readily makes its way into the local streamflow, which is where the most serious trouble begins
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When animals disappear, how are humans affected?
Are there extinct species that we really wish we hadn’t wiped out? I don’t mean we now say, “Gee, what a shame.” I mean, is there anything where we now […]
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What’s the life span of a skyscraper?
An engineering professor used to tell our class, “Everything eventually fails. The question is, when?” What happens with a mammoth building? What’s the intended life span of, say, the Willis […]
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What happens to birds during a hurricane?
The bottom line is that these birds don’t really go anywhere when they feel a storm coming—which, by the way, they’re able to do