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 […]
The Straight Dope
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What has been the leading cause of death for humans?
Our task is complicated by the fact that mortality statistics prior to 1900 are hopelessly inadequate
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How did bread come about?
Bread is surely among the most obvious food products on earth
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Are there better ways out of a burning building than the stairs?
Building safety is one field where disruption matters less than incremental improvement
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What countries accept political refugees from the U.S. on short notice?
The election of an unqualified bully as chief exec won’t in itself do the trick
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Why don’t we bomb Afghanistan’s poppy fields?
The Taliban is bad at lots of things—teaching little girls to read, for instance—but they were very good at terrifying their constituents into abandoning the drug trade
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Can pets taste flavor?
Taste starts with the tongue, and the number of taste buds varies drastically among species
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Did DNA cause humans to migrate around the world?
However it may affect people’s conduct, the 7R allele isn’t scattered evenly worldwide
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What happens to fan-made tributes left at celebrity memorials?
The dead flowers and rotten food got tossed, but everything else was documented and archived according to standard museum procedures
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If the sun goes out, how long till the earth freezes?
What might conceivably produce such an effect here on earth?
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Does the umbrella represent political weakness?
By contrast, the Cuban Umbrella Incident didn’t raise many eyebrows—besides yours, I mean—at home
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Was bison slaughter a U.S. military tactic in the Plains Wars?
The latter half of the 19th century wasn’t such a hot time to be an American bison