Fun_People Archive
25 Jan
Science has an answer for everything

Date: Thu, 25 Jan 96 15:30:05 -0800
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Science has an answer for everything

Forwarded-by: larryy@apple.com (Larry Yaeger)
Forwarded-by:  "Stephan Somogyi" <somogyi@digmedia.com>

These are supposedly responses to a contest sponsored by OMNI magazine:

Grand Prize Winner: When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and
when toast is dropped, it always lands with the buttered side facing down.
I propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat; the two will hover,
spinning inches above the ground. With a giant buttered cat array, a
high-speed monorail could easily link New York with Chicago.

[N.B.: This plan is small potatoes compared to the scheme described in
 "The bread comes in on little cat feet" -- Fun_People, May 21, 1993.
 See May 21 in <http://www.empire.net/~psl/Fun_People/1993.html>;
 this one still cracks me up every time I read it.  -psl]

[UPDATE: The Fun_People archive moved in September 1998 to:
	<http://www.langston.com/Fun_People/>  -psl]


Runners-up:

If an infinite number of rednecks riding in an infinite number of pickup
trucks fire an infinite number of shotgun rounds at an infinite number of
highway signs, they will eventually produce all the worlds great literary
works in Braille.

Why Yawning Is Contagious: You yawn to equalize the pressure on your eardrums.
This pressure change outside your eardrums unbalances other people's ear
pressures, so they must yawn to even it out.

Communist China is technologically underdeveloped because they have no
alphabet and therefore cannot use acronyms to communicate ideas at a faster
rate.

The earth may spin faster on its axis due to deforestation. Just as a figure
skater's rate of spin increases when the arms are brought in close to the
body, the cutting of tall trees may cause our planet to spin dangerously fast.


Honorable Mentions:

Birds take off at sunrise. On the opposite side of the world, they are landing
at sunset. This causes the earth to spin on its axis.

The reason hot-rod owners raise the backs of their cars is that it's easier
to go fast when you're always going downhill.

The quantity of consonants in the English language is constant. If omitted
in one place, they turn up in another. When a Bostonian "pahks" his "cah,"
the lost r's migrate southwest, causing a Texan to "warsh" his car and
invest in "erl wells."

© 1996 Peter Langston