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• Since Japan puts so much emphasis on dignity (way too much, in my American opinion) that women aren't supposed to tell anyone if they are groped, does that mean I could go over there and assault someone in public and get away with it because it is "some else's problem"?
  • With a good amount of planning, sure. Just like any other crime. You'd just have to make sure no one else sees you (forget policemen, I'm pretty sure even passersby would react to something like that). Oh, and do you look Asian, and can you speak Japanese well? If you can't pass for Japanese, you don't really have much of a chance.
• Why are many atheists so ironically self-righteous? In fact, why do most people with religious beliefs, no matter how undefined or vague, think they are better than others with slightly different beliefs?
  • Burnout. 90% or more of Atheists were religious (and usually Christian) growing up, then something made them change their mind. Atheists don't sign up just because they don't want to go to Church. Now, consider how People tend to treat their religion all over the world (Hint: Wars), And think how you'd feel if you just came to the conclusion that it all was a lie.
  • Talk to a Christian about their Christianity and there's thousands of years of related architecture, beauracracy, literature, controversies, music, academia and art to draw the conversation from. Talk to an atheist about their atheism and the only real plank for the conversation is 'Why aren't you religious'. Atheists sound negative because atheism is a negative. It's the absence of religious belief.
    • Well, that's one way of looking at it. Alternatively, it's an appreciation of the wonders and intricacies of nature, the advancements of science, human culture etc etc. Honestly not trying to be rude, just saying...
    • Yeah, but religious people are perfectly capable of appreciating nature, science and culture just as well as atheists. The sole requirement for atheism is a lack of religious belief. Anything else is window dressing. It may well apply to large subsets of atheists, (like humanists as the poster below me has rightly pointed out) but it's not an essential part of atheism.
    • That's humanism, not atheism, I believe.
    • Actually, yup, you're spot on. One just tends to go hand in hand with the other, in my experience.
    • A fanatic is a fanatic is a fanatic.
  • To the first, I think a lot of atheists have had bad experiences with religious people, and people tend to hold grudges. (Imagine if Jennifer Diane Reitz had had a more tolerant family.) As for religious beliefs in general, a lot of the time, "belief" means "I get it" - which naturally assumes that others haven't "gotten it" yet. As for me, I'm still trying to form a coherent belief system from Joan Of Arcadia, Out of Control, and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. And I, being a net-head, have more personal experience with angry atheists than Bible-thumpers.
  • As an atheist, my view is that the only reason why criticism of religion sounds excessively harsh is that we're so used to treating religion with kid gloves that anything outright critical sounds extreme. Something like The God Delusion is mild compared with a typical political commentator or restaurant critic.
    • That's not necessarily the right way to go about these things. It could just as well be argued that we need to be more polite in secular disagreements.
    • Dawkins compares religious scientists to Neville Chamberlain and, by extension, religious non-scientists to Adolf Hitler. Yes. Yes, this is very mild indeed.
    • I don't recall Dawkins ever comparing all religious non-scientists to Nazis, I also believe that he was ALSO criticizing non-religious people who think we can just ignore religion be all "live and let live" because the religious extremists don't have a live and let live attitude - they want everybody to see things their way! He also makes the point that we can't just say, oh science talks about the the material world and religion talks about the spiritual world because there are a lot of people who are trying to screw with science for religious purpose (witness the "intelligent desgin" movement.
    • That's simply taking the analogy too far. Dawkins' point was that his intellectual opposition was composed of people with a faith-based world view and that appeasing them for the sake of one battle (i.e. evolution vs. intelligent design) would be detrimental to the intellectual war (reason vs. faith). His invocation of Neville Chamberlain was making a point about appeasement and had nothing to do with comparing anyone to Hitler.
    • Given the things religious believers do, I think that is a bit mild. His point is that defending faith makes you responsible for what people DO with faith...
    • By that logic, defending the existence of governments makes one responsible for what people DO with governments... or cars, or pencils. The abuse of a thing does not invalidate beneficial use of a thing.
  • I agree, and taken into account that everyone hates everything ten times more on the internet, it doesn't surprise me to find it on message boards. It's still somewhat ironic to me.
  • If they weren't convinced that religion in general was wrong, they probably would be agnostics instead. Besides, every ideology has its fanatics.
  • Everyone thinks their own theories are right. This is natural: if they didn't, they'd change them so they were. Religious discussions get heated because they're important.
  • Agreed - I'm an atheist, and if you were to back me into a corner I'd probably strongly point out how right I (think I) am. However, having being brought up with the concept that there's a few other billion people on this planet other than me, I find its best not to be a prick about it. Especially on the internet.
  • In the words of the great Stephen Colbert, "Atheism: a religion dedicated to it's own sense of smug superiority." To be serious, though, in my experience most atheists (including my best friend) are perfectly tolerant, easy-going people -- it's just that the most fanatical of any social group tend to be the ones who shout loudest.
  • Also, speaking as someone raised in a less mainstream religion, it's hard to get repeatedly told you're going to hell without it leaving some kind of mark.
  • There are no agnostics, just honest people and waffling wankers. Since all facts in science are merely the most likely and strongly supported theories, an atheist is just somebody that tends to support facts instead of falsehoods.
    • Kindly point be towards any evidence the deism is false, and no Occam's razor is not evidence.
    • You can't prove a negative since a non-existent thing will by definition not leave anything behind. What you can do is point to the total lack of evidence for a god and far more convincing natural explanations for the things gods get blamed for. Now technically this isn't proof, but then by the same reasoning we can't technically prove the non-existence of Santa Claus, I'm still an asantaist though.
    • That is blatantly untrue. There are, in fact, agnostics, because not everything in the world is a matter of objective scientific fact. Science is an analysis of objective facts about the universe we live in; modern religion, at its core, is a subjective analysis of why our universe is the way it is in a metaphysical or ethical sense. They are not the same thing, no matter how much Richard Dawkins wants to rail about how NOMA is a sop to the irrationalists and how religion is just a scientific hypothesis.
    • But religion isn't empirical. Religion is semantic. It makes empirical claims, but it uses semantic arguments for them and semantic arguments are required to disprove them. Given how many agnostics I know personally, I can only conclude that some people either don't understand this (which can't be helped) or can't make up their minds (which would tend to make them fair game, but only if you're a complete and total douche like Christopher Hitchens).
    • Religion makes empirical claims, but can't provide any empirical evidence to prove or disprove them. However, just about everyone agrees that what happens after death with provide you with some evidence of which claims are correct, whether it's heaven, reincarnation, or nonexistence. Therefore, agnostics could just be people who are comfortable with not drawing conclusions until they die and get this evidence.
  • Because converts are inevitably douchebags. Doesn't matter what they've converted to, Christianity, Islam, Wicca, Atheism, Veganism....Douchebags.
    • So someone raised in a cult has to be a cultist or a douchebag? Is there no third option?
  • Sampling error – you're less likely to find out someone's an atheist if they're not self-righteous, especially in places like the US, where atheists feel persecuted.
  • No, that's just like asking why so many Christians are so ironically judgemental. It's because atheists (and Christians) are people, and many people are assholes. Therefore, many atheists are assholes. And those are the ones people notice instead of the nice, sensible ones. It's that simple.
• What is up with the Maddox Doctrine? How did people get it into their heads that, given the option, it is preferable to be as rude and contemptuous as humanly possible? How is that a good thing? Unless you're going by some "attention is everything" mindset, which I don't subscribe to.
  • Because they (and Maddox himself) think they're being "edgy". They're really just as annoying as any of the subcultures they make fun of.
  • Or, alternatively, because they're not thinking long-termly, either by theirs own or the Maddox Doctrine's fault. Picture a world where, given the option, everyone will be as rude and comtemptuous as humanly possible...
  • Or possible because being a pessimist is easy and can be funny (in certain doses).
  • Because, as soon as you join a clique the first thing you want to do is run around and spray paint on some shit. You've got your get out of jail free card. Some people take that opportunity of having a cause for the first time to be a tremendous douchebag for it.

• Why are Japan and many other Asian countries so friggin sexist?
  • Probably an outgrowth of Confucianism's downplay of the individual in favor of the group.
    • Why was Confucianism (including that aspect) so successful, then?
    • I think you just answered your own question - The group might be wrong, but the individual can't fight them all, unless he's Mike Haggar - and, even then, he better have Cody's help.
  • Well it's not like the big events in the history of everything happened everywhere around the world at the exact same time. That would be freaky. Cultures, even if you don't agree with them, are different because they have differing histories.
  • ...are you saying that countries outside Asia aren't sexist? Dude, if you honestly believe that, you're not paying attention. The levels of vileness vary, as do the ways in which it manifests, but there's sexism everywhere in the world.
    • True, but Japan imports FAR more culture to the United States and Europe than most, making cultural differences more apparent.
    • Aren't there two groups in the discusion (men and women)?
• How do you tell the difference between a Chinese person and a Japanese person?
  • Chinese people speak Chinese, Japanese people speak Japanese.
  • How do you tell the difference between a French guy and a British guy? It's like that.
  • Ask their name. The languages have slight differences if you have a cursory knowledge of one of them (Japanese people aren't named Nguyen or Tsao, for instance. If they have three names (e.g., Jin Soo Kwon), they're Korean.)
  • A Japanese person once got quite mad at me for not being able to tell the difference between Japanese and Chinese by sight. As he was ranting at me about it, I asked him if he could tell if my ancestry was French or German. He stared at me blankly and declared that was completely irrelevant.
  • You're not the only one - I'm Australian, but due to Scottish parents, my accent is quite mangled (I sound like I've walked out of an Oscar Wilde novel, cup of tea in hand). I once got into a "heated discussion" with someone when I mistook them for Chinese over Korean (true, there are differences, but it was an simple & honest mistake). Yet apparently mistaking me for English over Australian wasn't the same thing. Just grin and bear it.
  • Keep visiting http://www.alllooksame.com until you get a perfect score.
  • Most Japanese names have more than one syllable in their last names (e.g. Yamato, Ikari). Most Chinese names (of Han ethnicity) has only one syllable for their last names (e.g. Wong, Lee) and compose of 5 or less letters. Similarly, Korean names also have one syllable in many of their last names, and share several with Chinese names (e.g. Lee, Kim); Vietnamese names have more of a French influence in their spelling.
    • A good rule is that Chinese names will usually have no more than three characters (and therefore, three syllables). Japanese names can have more syllables and characters.
  • Chinese people tend to have rounder faces.
  • Someone speaking Chinese sounds like a tape being played backwards. Someone speaking Japanese sounds like he's trying to lift an extremely heavy weight.
• Tying into the first question: Why are women religious? There's no religion that doesn't treat them second class. Masochism Tango, if ever I saw it.
  • You don't know many liberal or moderate religious people, do you? Divorced from the rest of the culture, Asian religions are usually fairly egalitarian. So is Islam...in theory.
    • Granted, I can't speak for Asian religions, but even the most liberal of the Abrahamic-derived faiths a) consider women "lower" than men, and b) treat it like some blasphemy that they might receive equality in things like leadership of either church or family units. The level of application of a) & b) vary depending on how willing a branch is to defy the central authority. If there's one that treats the genders equally, haven't seen it.
    • Clearly, you've never seen the Religious Society of Friends.
    • Many liberal branches of Christianity defy both A and B. Hell, almost all of them pay at least lip service to male/female equality, even if many of them deny it in practice. Some mainstream branches have begun to let women take major leadership positions. It's only a matter of time.
    • I hear Zoroastrianism (the link between Eastern religion and Western...the one Freddy Mercury belonged to) treats us all the same. Though I'm sure there are cases in which followers just don't do as they're told in that sense...
  • Figure it out for yourself. If you want a religion that won't let you buy an indulgence, MAKE one. If you want a branch of Christianity that doesn't treat 50 percent of Christians like dirt, think about it and MAKE one. Don't wait around.
    • Or, for that matter, do some research before you declare that all branches of Christianity are lead by sexist pigs. There are several well established denominations of Protestant Christianity that have been huge supporters of social justice for decades. Like, for instance, the Congregationalists, and the United Church of Christ (which absorbed about half of the Congregationalist churches about fifty years ago). Civil rights, women's rights, gay rights... there's really not much that we haven't been behind. I'm sure my female conference minister would like to hear that all religions treat women as second-class citizens.
  • There is so much wrong with that question that I don't even know where to begin. First, your assumption that all religions are sexist is patently false. In addition to the religious groups that other posters have mentioned, many branches of Paganism are female CENTRIC, worshiping the Goddess as supreme, and calling all clergy "priestesses" regardless of gender. Secondly, you assume that all women have the same standards of sexism and what it means to be a "second class citizen," when, in fact, a lot of that is defined by culture. Maybe it would bug you less if you started making fewer sweeping generalizations about "women" and "religion."

• Why do animals run away from predators that they could easily turn and kill? For example, why don't wildebeests stampede towards lions?
  • Interesting question, that- I'd put it down to the fact that their higher reasoning abilities aren't developed enough for that kind of lateral thinking. Each individual wildebeests instincts are telling it, "Lion! Run! The herd must survive!" so they all do, at the same time. They'd need an impressive level of individual communication to coordinate a large-scale attack. Having said that, a lot of animals don't automatically run from predators, and have even been known to attack preemptively- dolphins and zebras come to mind. Not to mention some that just make threatening gestures or curl up ina an armored and/or spiky ball. Animals are weird, man...
  • Not much communication needed. Just start running froward and the others will follow you, even right into any predators that are in front of you. This can be proven if you'll look at what happens if a lion is unlucky enough to be caught in their path, it's dead. Seems to me that they should just be programmed to charge the threat en masse. Humans achieved our initial success by simply ganging up on predators and prey alike. Look at where we are now.
  • In a related question: You see a fearsome predator/landslide/personal enemy, you'll need to be in top form to get out of THIS situation in one piece! Your evolutionary stress response kicks in, immediately whipping you into shape by causing you to… Become wobbly-kneed with nausea, have all the blood rush from your head to leave you spinning with dizziness, tighten your throat to make you wheeze for air, void your bowels, empty your bladder, and vomit? This doesn't just happen from stress, but even from extremely heavy exhertion (like, say, 'while in the middle of running away from a threat).
    • This isn't a response to danger, but more a response to the response, from what I understand. The body kicks in a sort of afterburner (anaerobic respiration) that gives you extra energy, but also generates a lot of toxins. And between the person who can only jog but doesn't get tired and the one who can sprint for a few minutes and then vomits, the sprinter's going to be more likely to survive. Slow and steady wouldn't have won the race if the hare was trying to eat the tortoise.
  • The current system is evolutionarily stable, while the alternative is not. No antelope benefits from charging at lions, because they'd just get eaten. However, if every antelope charged the lions, any single antelope benefits from simply letting it be somebody else's problem.
  • They benefit... until the lions hunt them down and kill them while they run like mindless idiots despite vastly superior numbers. So no, makes absolutely no sense in this regard either. Each individual antelope would benefit from ganging up and simply killing all the lions, meaning no more predators. No predators = no risks = benefits for an individual.
  • If every antelope decided to do that all at once, yes, it would work, but such a simultaneous mutation is unlikely, to say the least. Such changes happen gradually, but every time it gets started, the selfless antelope just dies and no progress is made towards collective counter-charging. Even if that state was reached, there is still the fact that an antelope who does not charge is better off than one that does, because they save energy and avoid even the very small risk involved, but still don't get eaten because somebody is still flattening the lions, and so it is individually beneficial to not take part in such shenanigans. That this inevitably leads to a herd of cowards is beyond the scale at which evolution operates, which is on the individual, at the present; not on some hypothetical individual who is surrounded by like-minded lion-tramplers.
  • So how did we develop the ability to come up with that?
  • What you're discussing here is known as "game theory," and it actually applies to many aspects of human behavior as well. The "prisoner's dilemma" is an example of how this can lead to suboptimal behavior patterns in humans.
  • We didn't just come up with the ability to think on that. First, we developped coherent thought
  • Actually, since many animals are instinctively herd animals, for them to charge predators would make perfect sense. You've got a herd. Imagine if wildebeests had half a brain between a whole herd. They'd think, "Wait a second here. We = thousands. They = at most a dozen or two. Let's kill em all! Chaaaarge!"
  • Evolution doesn't actually makes sense in our way of thinking. For nature, it's actually worthy to kill one and save a great bunch. You may notice that not even lions kill more than one antilope at a time. Evolution doesn't work towards the species outright superiority(beast > lion), but survival(number of beast >> 0).
  • I take it no one has seen this video
  • Wow, all herd animals should take lessons from those guys.
  • I'd take the Occam's Razor and say that the instinct to kill and not eat is not natural. Not even humans had this so early, evolutionary speaking.
  • For the same reason crowds of people don't rush those nuts with guns that shoot up schools.
  • Not comparable. Give the lions the ability to kill a wildebeest from a long distance and it would be. However, in many revolts throughout history, masses of nearly unarmed people have rushed small groups of soldiers (comparable to the size of a lion pride) that were armed with guns. The success rate is pretty high, when it is done.
  • But those leading the charges would often die first.
    • And few people want to be the Forlorn Hope.

• Why did it take so dang long to invent the Internet and how did people live without it?
  • Drugs. For both questions.
  • But what about the poor unfortunate souls who didn't take drugs?
  • No such people.
  • Well, if these "drugs" are so wonderful that people could use them to get by without the Internet, how did people get by without them
  • Lesser drugs. and lots of sex. Where do think population growth comes from?
  • I graduated high school without ever touching a single cigarette, joint, or whatever (still haven't) and a virgin, so next theory. (Mine is that I had Christ and books, but I know no one will buy that.)
    • Dude, that was a joke.
  • Duh: you have the Internet
  • "Religion is the opium of the people."
  • "Religion is the opiate opium of the people."
  • -- Karl Marx
  • Full quote "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people,"
    • Calvin And Hobbes quote: "What does "Religion is the opium of the masses" mean?" "It meant that Karl Marx hadn't seen anything yet" (That was a Television, thinking.) And by extension, Bill Watterson hadn't seen anything yet.
  • I also graduated high school a virgin and drug-free . . . but in my case the Internet was clearly the culprit.
  • I see you're high school and raise you college. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go microwave a bagel and have sex with it.
    • Butter's in the fridge!
  • Since we're all making such a big deal of it, I finished High School drug-free by choice, sex-free by circumstance, and an atheist by revelation. I went off to college, and started smoking, found God, lost my virginity, and experimented with pot in that order.
  • Started out a Christian, became an atheist sometime in high school, stayed drug-free and sex-free the whole time; you could say I was drug-free by choice, sex-free by circumstance and an atheist by revelation, but unlike the above troper, I have managed none of that since entering university. And the sex thing is not for lack of trying either
  • For the second question: absurd passtimes that saw the founding of geekdom. Did you know that most civilizations around the world produced mathematical models of the motions of the planets and other heavenly bodies whose calendrical margin of error amounted to under a week in a millennia, and before they even invented full writing system?
  • For the first- absence makes the heart grow fonder. Each preceding generation needed the internet more and more, which was why society appeared to be going downhill. For the second- complex personalities, hormones gone wild and the ability to write a detailed, continuitous head-story to pass the time before they managed to get to sleep at night. So it's just like Girl Scout camp. (Or Boy Scout camp, without all the ambiguous sexual experimentation.) (And to the above discussion- currently, I'm sex-free by orientation- jeez, can I brag some more?- drug free by virtue of hypochondria, and Christian by sheer nerd factor. I want to become a theologian. Okay?)

• When did the letter "H" become a vowel? Why do people talk about "an historic event" or "an hysterical fit"? People who speak with accents that often involve "dropping" the H have a reason for using the "an" - an 'orse, an 'oliday - but even then, they didn't write it down. The only you need to put "an" in front of a word beginning with "H" is where it's silent - like "honor." Now there are newspapers referring to "an hilarious comedy." And more to the point - why does this incredibly minor quirk of language annoy me so much?
  • This is actually an older rule of English; a word starting with "H" is preceded by "an". It's obviously not used much nowadays, with the most common use, for some reason, being "an historical".
  • Blame the Norman conquerors, who came from a country where they almost never pronounce the letter "H". Thus, when they saw an article to be used when the word begins with a vowel, they started to use it, and the habit has never quite been shaken.
  • Our insane imageboard friends at 4chan even made a meme of this: "An Hero". The details are sad, so I won't go into them.
  • That's actually more to make fun of a typo from a certain page than anything to do with the H...
  • Dropping the "H" sound helps... Both sound right depending on how you pronounce the following, as with or without a vowel sound. Never heard of this "H" rule...
  • To answer your second point, you are obviously a Grammar Nazi - welcome to the club.
  • Yay, we have a club! Anyway, I only thought you used "an" when the h is silent (an hour), but used a when you pronounce it (a hero).
    • What about welsh people? Can they say An 'ero?
  • More importantly, when did people start thinking the letter Y was a vowel?!
    • When it started being pronounced like an I.
  • Even more importantly, when did W stop being a vowel?
    • When you start speaking English and stop speaking Standard Mandarin.

• Why are mobile phone ringtones so annoying?
  • Because if they were enjoyable to listen to, you'd listen to your ringtone instead of answering the phone.
  • I've actually had that problem before.
  • Because you only notice the annoying ones. All the people with their 'phone set to a bell ringing or whatever just fade into the periphery of your perception, all of the people that have adapted some artifact of popular culture into a ringtone through furious molestation immediately cause seething pain throughout your mind. Plus, people that do this tend to have retched taste in pop culture to begin with.
  • Because in the early days of cell phones, people didn't have a choice of ringtones--each phone just had a single ring. Which led to the common situation where someone's cell phone would ring, and everyone would have to check to see if it was their phone ringing. Having a wide variety of ringtones (and given a wide variety, some are inevitably annoying) is actually not as bad as what we used to have.
  • Or you could just set it to vibrate, even back then.

• Why do mobile phones have cameras, but landlines do not normally have video cameras for the benefit of deaf people (they could use them to communicate by sign language)?
  • Those exist, but they just aren't very popular.
  • AT&T already tried that. Remember the slow-scan Picturephone in the 1960's? The digital, monochrome VideoPhone 2500 in the late 1980s? Both bombed spectacularly (*sniffle*). Not to mention that no cellphone I've ever seen actually lets you to videoconference with their cameras, only allowing you to take snapshots and videos like you already can with a standalone camera. I've used PC-based VOIP videoconferencing since the 1980s though, and it may well completely supplant normal 'phones some day, especially with more cellphones running legitimate OSs capable of real (free) internet VOIP. Also, the most common way deaf people use a telephone is with a special teletype machine and service called TDD, you've probably seen them at airports and such.
    • Zeerust, Video phones are well within our technology, and many people now video chat via computer. However, they never came into wide use the way science fiction expected because it turned out that nobody wanted to have to look presentable to answer the phone.

• Why don't we have solar powered flying cars yet?
  • Big oil companies. Everyone knows they're holding back alternate energy and mass transit, but far less well publicized is the fact that Exxon has singlehandedly stymied the development of hovercars, jetpacks, teleporters, The Everyman Project, and mass enlightenment for all the Earth. They also underwrote Ballistic: Ecks Versus Sever, killed President Kennedy, cancelled Firefly, and ran over my dog.
  • Flying cars have been around since the 1950s, so have sub-$50,000 (today dollars) airplanes and helicopters. Why aren't you flying one? Oh, right, you do not have a pilot's license. Did you know that auto accidents are the leading cause of violent death since decades ago? Imagine if most of them could fly, and qualification was as easy as present-day driver's licenses. That is why there will never be flying cars.
  • There will never be a practical solar car. The amount of energy available per square meter is about 375 W/m^2. 1 HP = 746W. Therefore, in a nice, bright shiny day, with an inexistent 100% efficient panel (real ones are maybe 15% efficient) and electric system, you get about 0.5 HP per square meter of solar panels on your car. That's why the ones you see are all so weird and flimsy. That amount of energy is not enough for any modern car. Just the radio and various lights would consume several times more than the available solar power. You can however have an electric car with a battery, and charge it with a house covered with solar panels.
  • Have you ever had your car break down on the side of the road? Unpleasant experience, yes. Now imagine it happening when you are 200 feet ABOVE the side of the road.
    • Autogyration/gliding to the rescue! Admittedly tricky, but that's why you got pilot training, right?

• Why can ordinary cars travel at upwards of 250kph when the speed limit is 100kph at most?
  • To facilitate high speed chases.
  • In the USA, most cars are only designed for up to 120mph (~193.1kph), and highway speed limits typically run up to 70-80mph (~112.6-128.7kph), the remainder is intended for passing and emergency measures. Of course, much of Germany's famous Autobahn has no speed limit, so Porsche gets a free pass on this question.

• Why do so many people refuse to use the metric system?
  • Because then those colonial bastards win.
  • So it's better to use the Imperial system than one invented during a revolution?
  • Of course. Clearly, anybody who supports the metric system supports the decapitation of scientists. Those who favor the Imperial system just support driving the scientists to insanity. Beyond that, "A journey of 1609.344 kilometers begins with a single step" doesn't roll off the tounge as well.
    • Make that 500 km. The journey in the saying was originally a thousand li, where a li is a Chinese unit that varied significantly through history (but was always much less than a mile) and was eventually standardised at 500 metres.
  • I have no idea, but my Mom seems to think that it's hard to get used to if you're accustomed to the imperial system.
  • I think that's it. You'd have to memorize a bunch of converting factors, or learn a new system of measurement. (If you're used to the imperial system, you probably have a good feel for how much a pound weighs, and also know that it's sixteen ounces. But do you have a good feel for how much a kilogram is? Or know the pound-to-kilo conversion factor? You'd need one or the other, is what I'm saying.) It's more of an issue for a society to change its measuring system than it is for an individual to, though... think about all the things that we use to measure, or that have measurements on them/in them. Speed limit signs. Cookbooks (and measuring cups/spoons). Wrenches and bolts. It's a lot of stuff to change or start doing differently and I guess a lot of people don't see the point--especially since it would mean a bit of personal effort in the area of learning metric or the conversions. ETA: Also, I think many people 1)hate and 2)are bad at doing math, even really trivial math.
  • It's because they marketed it wrong, basically. If they'd called things "metric yards" instead of meters and marketed milk in four-liter jugs ("metric gallon"), people'd have had a much better feel for it and gotten used to it, and then started using the metric names to avoid confusion ("Hey, do you mean yards-yards or metric yards?" "Meters, OK?")
  • It's simply hard to get used to. To get a feel of how weird the 'other' system is, try to count in base 7 for a day or two and you'll realise that converting to another system of units is really hard.
  • I've always found working in metric difficult, i roughly know the system and can work within it but whenever i need to convert between the two my mind goes blank. Pure laziness i'm sure but what can i say i'm just used to stones and pounds.
  • I believe the Imperial system is just easier for non-scientists to work with, since many of the measurements are based on the average sizes of human body parts. How long is an inch? The length of a knuckle. A foot is a foot, a yard is roughly the length of one's arm and so on. The metric system is harder to visualize on that level.
  • Um...serious what? That depends entirely on how long your body parts are.
  • Some of the Imperial measurements have more convenient factors than decimal-based systems, which can facilitate estimation, or scaling up or down. For example, 2, 3, 4, and 6 all multiply evenly into 12, the basis of most of the length measures; 10 factors only into 2 and 5. Doesn't excuse the failings of the system at large or small scales, or the problems working with incompatible composite units like feet per second, or some of the frankly insane units the system includes (1 mile = 5280 feet?), but in some situations it can still be easier to work with.
    • How is 'feet per second' an incompatible unit? It's measuring how far something travels in a given amount of time. By your logic any measurement of distance paired with a measurement of time shouldn't happen.
  • And why is it that when you buy tyres, the sidewall height and tread width are measured in millimetres, but the diameter of the wheel it's supposed to go on is in inches?!
  • Because those people don't listen to enough Atom & His Package?
    • There's a reason for that.
  • I point out that most of the answers in this thread also would have applied to all the countries that HAVE adopted the metric system. The real question is, why is the US so backwards in this regard? I have an answer, but since it's patently insulting to my countrymen, I'll forego it.
    • It wants to be special.
    • Actually, it's because if the Americans swtiched over to the metric system, they'd have to replace all of the signs that mention miles. The government doesn't want to pay that much money just to appease us nerds, so we're keeping the imperial system.
    • Okay, so why didn't we switch over back when we were SUPPOSED to, forty years ago? Or better yet, back when basically everyone else in the world was jumping on the bandwagon? No, you don't need to answer that, I know Americans have this need to be unique. It's still annoying in my science classes, though.
    • And those reasons applied to many of the countries that HAVE adopted the metric system. Yes, the obvious answer is patently insulting, but considering that we're talking about the country that produced the Susan B. Anthony dollar, is it not fair?
  • It's the result of a Communist plot to hold back American technological advancement.
  • Because the only way to change a country's system of measurement is by government action, and the American people are so distrustful of government that they thought the British system was dangerously efficient.
  • Fahrenheit is more useful in everyday life then Celsius is. The average temperatures most people will encounter in any given day can be expressed in the Fahrenheit range of 0-100, allowing for easier understanding and greater specificity of daily temperatures then the equivalent Celsius range of -17 to 38.
    • As a Briton who has used the Celsius system all his life, I can safely say that knowing any negative number is below freezing and 100 is boiling has helped put temperatures in perspective better than a skewed system which is only still used by a bunch of warmongering dinosaurs (no offense).
    • How is "no offense" supposed to detract from that, particularly given the asynchronous text-based medium which doesn't allow for literal or figurative slips of the tongue?
    • We really shouldn't be offended. After all, the insults of a tenth rate former world power that can't even stand up to Ghandi aren't worth mentioning.
    • That's funny, I don't understand how Fahrenheit works at all. Celsius has always made sense to this Canadian. And, really, when you go from occasional -30 to occasional 30, Fahrenheit catches up on one end and outstrips the other. Sliding scales don't make a whole lot of sense, especially when one end is boiling water, and the other end is freezing. Why is the melting point at 32, anyway?
    • Err... Celsius is also based the boiling/freezing points of water, it just starts at 0 and ends at 100.

• Why is 4chan?
  • A million monkeys at a million typewriters my friend.
  • Twelve monkeys, one hour.
  • And a bald chimpanzee ready to launch into orbit - those bold, brave space monkeys.
  • Herpes viruses with penises and keyboards.
  • Why not?
  • Because The Internet needs a force of Chaos to balance out its origins in Order.

• Why are American sitcoms like Everybody Loves Raymond so wildly popular?
  • Because Viewers Are Morons.
  • See also According to Jim. Better yet, don't.
  • Or maybe because people enjoy it? Is it really that hard to fathom?
  • In the case of that particular show? YES, IT IS.
  • I theorize that the audience of such pseudotainment don't have, or realize there are, alternatives...like the Internet, or cable/satellite, or video games, or music, or a hobby, or a book...
  • Or maybe they find it entertaining because they're not snotty little brats who want to seem smarter than everyone else?
    • Because it's impossible that someone could fail to see the appeal of a popular show without holding an Its Popular Now It Sucks mindset (albeit without the show having started off obscure and been liked by the person in question then).
  • There's nothing snotty here, shows like these have weak dialogue writing, recycled plot lines, Flanderized characters, and are a dime a dozen. The only real way to enjoy any show like "Raymond" is to just convince yourself that nothing better is on TV at the timeslot and never explore the alternatives.

• Why is this site so bloody addictive?
  • Because Evil Feels Good. Join us.
  • Because the entries are interesting, well written, informative, and hilarious.
  • Because it has all the satisfaction of fiction writing with none of the creativity.
  • Mangoes.

• Why does Wikipedia have such a ridiculously long entry on the word 'thou'? Also, why does it have one on a beer drunk by Homer Simpson
  • [[Spoiler:Don't get me started on the pokemon argument. Delete my entry you notoriety seeking dumbwads...]]
    • Don't tempt me...
    • Okay!

• One huge problem [with real life]is that the main character is not at all obvious. I woke up in the middle of the night, thinking that some significant plot event was about to happen to me. But then I realized that everyone else doesn't think I'm a main character, so all that happened was that I used the bathroom and got a drink of water before complaining about the lack of main character on this Wiki. There needs to be some concensus on who the main character of this is, so that we might better apply tropes to this.
  • It's a Government Proceedural meets Ancient Conspiracy, and the main character is George Bush. You and I are Those Two Guys. Your older brother is a Mook.
  • You have it confused. I am the oldest brother. You might be thinking of my wife, who has an Evil Twin brother, and they were Separated At Birth. By the way, I'm completely serious about that.
  • I always assumed I was the main character, because as far as I can tell, the story is first person limited, and it never seems to leave my P.O.V. However, I have a twin and I grew a beard about a year ago which makes me likely to be Evil Twin, but then I realized that it's probably being parodied, especially since I recently moved into a Five Man Band apartment which matches perfectly, (and I even have a romantic past with The Chick). There are probably other shows I've crossed over with. Of course, now that I've come to this realization, I am dreadfully afraid that the show will be cancelled, or I'll be killed by a bus to make way for a more interesting main character.
  • No, actually, you're the POV character in a fanfic written by Zeus about how the main character's actions affect the average person.
  • Perhaps we are all the main characters of our own stories and reality is one giant Cross Over or Shared Universe (or a 'Verse, for that matter).
  • I seriously hope not. I have too much TV to watch as it is.
  • "All the worlds a stage, and all the people meerly actors. Unfortunatly i feel i have been cast as an extra" - Paraphrased (Badly) from Discworld.
  • At least you know what you are. I never even got my copy of the script! I've just been ad-libbing this whole time...
  • Dude, we sent it on time. Mailman must have stolen it. I assure you it was good, though.
  • That's why no one else ever knows their lines!
  • Our characters are not Genre Savvy enough yet.
  • Who's writing some of this shit anyway? Hitler committing suicide? There's a copout if ever there was one. And have you heard some of the dialog Bush has?
  • We're in a fanfic.
  • It's post-modernism. It doesn't have to make sense.
  • The Main Character and his true allies/foes haven't been born yet. We're just the secondary POV characters in the backstory. Since the author's trying to be REAL exact with the story but is making it up as they go along, we're all around to gather all the knowledge and technology for the Main Characters to use and to act as selective breeding to ingrain all the traits the standard character archtypes have into their DNA. If that isn't your purpose, you're either NPC breeding stock or somehow necessary for some Time/Space travel related plot device.
  • Our show has Loads And Loads Of Characters, and is set in a Crapsack World (oh,yes it is). It has a rotating main cast, like in Doctor Who. Right now, the main characters are Dubya (The Scrappy), Gordon Brown, and whoever's in the news right now. We are all minor characters. And while Hitler might not be the best written of villains (he has a mustache for God's sake), the writer is getting better, no longer resorting to Deus Ex Machina (God popping out of the sky to make people do things or saving people), yet despite this improvement, people still complain (oh, why wasn't God there to help me? The writer got better, that's why.)
  • My script constantly breaks the fourth wall, but the audience seems to enjoy it.
  • I was a Deadpan Snarker Gentle Giant Chivalrous Pervert Smart One in our Five Man Band. Then I got BrotherChucked.
  • I'm pretty sure that I'm somehow relevant to the core story, due to my Superpowered Evil Side and the fact that Superpowerful Genetics seems to apply to my scholastic abilities, plus my Deadpan Snarker and Genre Savvy traits too...
  • I can only assume that we're an interconnected series of different shows. Oh, and since I'm a boy who goes to a girl's school, I'm pretty clearly in a Harem Comedy.
  • I can only assume I'm going to move past my Age Appropriate Angst and move into the territory of Action Girl, but at the moment I'm attempting to outrun the looming specter of depression coupled with a little Innocence Virgin On Stupidity. So can I be the Yaoi Fangirl in the background?
  • This troper actually has a strange friend (who is also a troper) who seems convinced that he is not the main charactrer in his life story. He's still trying to figure out who is.
• Why can't I build a dirigible with my mind?
  • Who says you can't?
  • The mean man outside my window.
  • You aren't trying hard enough.
  • There's not enough material to work with. Try stiching other people's minds together instead.

• How did people get into the mindset that only by lying, cheating, stealing and performing other such unscrupulous acts you can get ahead in life and make your wildest dreams come true? When did the concept of hard, honest work, charity and customer service fall out of favor for the modern man? Seems like only those big, bad corporate executives that like to step on their employees and those soccer moms who have no scruples with ruining someone's life with a frivolous lawsuit are the only ones that can make it in this cutthroat modern lifestyle.
  • Did you ever see They Live? It's either those guys or the Dalek Emperor. In any case, they will be pulped for protein when the revolution comes.
  • People lying, cheating, and scheming to get their way to the top is hardly new. It's just the public knows about it more because of the mass media. Truly, ignorance is bliss.
  • You're all so naive. Our wildest dreams are lying, cheating, stealing, and frivolous lawsuits.
  • Not true. Our wildest dreams involve Eye Beams, fish on trampolines, and a cute blonde girl named Marv.
  • My wildest dream is writing something that'll be featured on this wiki.
    • Kinda hard to do, given we don't have featured articles. I guess Made Of Win might count instead...

• Why do some people feel they need to hound whoever wronged them for years after the offense? Is it an example of life imitating art? Why waste the energy?
  • Because they're just bastards.
  • The ones who offended them are bastards, you mean? After all, if they had no reason to attack the innocent (Freudian Excuse apart), why shouldn't they be punished for years to come? Revenge is sweet, and so is justice. Hahahaha!
  • We all have our obsessions, I guess.
  • Because the alternative doesn't make for a compelling story:
    Frasier: You know the expression "Living well is the best revenge?"
    Niles: It's a wonderful expression. Just don't know how true it is. Don't see it turning up in a lot of opera plots. "Ludwig, maddened by the poisoning of his entire family, wreaks vengeance on Gunther in the third act by living well."
    Frasier: All right, Niles.
    Niles: "Whereupon Woton, upon discovering his deception, wreaks vengeance on Gunther in the third act again by living even better than the Duke."

• Why am I not fabulously attractive like all the other anime girls? You'd think that after years of selective breeding and evolution only pretty people would be left.
  • Evolution and selective breeding doesn't take into account the ever-changing opinion on what "pretty" is; back in the middle ages, what we would consider obese was considered handsome, so it's impossible to accurately breed out what is considered "ugly", since that opinion may change and fall out of fashion during the breeding process.
  • Not to mention that all those not considered attractive tend to pair up with each other anyway, preserving their genes. And that attractiveness is only one factor in successfully mating, wealth, power and personality all effect it as well. Read This
    • As a proof, compare Giada De Laurentis (hottie) from Everyday Italian to her husband. Bit of a looks mismatch there.
  • You are also forgetting this◊
  • Standards of sex appeal vary substantially between genders. A handsome man is a barrel-chested, square-jawed, steel-sinewed titan; A beautiful woman is an hourglass-waisted, high-cheeked, curvy waif: The contradictory nature of these standards and combinitory nature of breeding ensure that if two sufficiently attractive people reproduce, their children will grow up to be completely hideous.
  • You say you're not attractive like "other anime girls". Are you saying you *are* an anime girl? Because, if so…
    • Cosplayer, hopefully NOT CD.
  • You'll find ugly people, like fat people, have been forced to develop these things- they're called personalities. Some of them are jolly. Some of them are snarky. Some of them are sweet and affectionate. And believe it or not, some pretty people see this and like it. I'd rather have the children of the future be hideously deformed but healthy, friendly and likeable, rather than big eyed, small nosed, Cheek-Teethed and Generically Cute but with Trope-Perfect personalities.

• Is Kurt Busiek a scientologist?
  • Kurt Busiek is every scientologist.

• Robin Williams. Just what is up with this guy and why is he so popular? I mean, his whole act seems to be doing impressions and waving his arms around and talking VERY LOUD... for heaven's sake, I did that all the time as a kid and no one gave me a freaking movie contract. And I can still do all those things, but I try not to as, apparently, when anybody else does it, it's annoying. But when he does it, it's considered genius. What is up with that? Does he have magical mind controlling body hair or something?
  • Burn the Blasphemer!
  • Okay, maybe I was a little hard on him. But it just seems he's everywhere these days... kinda bugging me. Mind you, I loved him as a kid. Maybe I really am just jealous. Which brings up another thing that bugs me: How the heck do you get famous anyway? I think I'm pretty talented, but meanwhile there's these drugged up ho-bags (pardon my language) getting all this media attention. Is that all there is now? Negative attention?
  • "To become famous kill a famous man"- Callisthenes
  • Because he's a somewhat attractive, well-built man in the prime of his life, and whatever else may be said he appreciates his fans and has a good head for internet marketing. ...wait, sorry, I'm tired and I thought you said Dane Cook.
  • I've had it explained this way (and I explained it before the Great Crash): At some point, he was really funny. A lot of people caught him when he was really funny, and laughed quite a bit. Then, he either got less funny (not completely, just someone less) or changed style. Either way, the end result is that his current funniness only works if you still have the memory of him at his peak of hilarity. You can take his partial funniness now, connect it to that memory, and his current stuff is hilarious. If you lack that memory (like I do, being too young to have caught his early stuff), his popularity is nearly inexplicable.
  • Okay, it's been several months since I posted this entry. Robin no longer bugs me. What bugs me is the fact that I've done a total 180 and am now totally bloody obsessed with him! And it's not so much that it just bugs me, more that I'm afraid that I'm bugging you guys by doing a reference to one of his films or Mork and Mindy whenever I see a trope that's appeared there. Not to mention my squicky crush on him.

• What's the deal with the colour pink?
  • You know about the DEAL!!!?
  • The colour red seems more vivid to women than men
  • There's a colour pink now?
  • It's not pink! It's lightish red!

• Who did put the bomp in the bomp-she-bomp-she-bomp?
  • Same guy who wrote The Book of Love.
    • This guy also put the 'ram' in the ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong

• The Second Law of Thermo. WHY?
  • Because True Art Is Angsty, and the universe's eventual heat death (combined with the Big Freeze theory) make up the ultimate Downer Ending. I, on the other hand, fall closer to the escapist side, and thus include a healthily optimistic suspicion of reincarnation.
    • [[Main/Marathon "Escape will make me god."]]
  • I, on the other hand, include a reverence for the word of Asimov, and indeed know what the Last Question is...and its answer...
  • Everyone knows the answer is 42!
  • Let there be light!
  • The universe will be restarted by Kamina punching it.

• Where have all the good men gone?
  • Long time passing?
  • And where are all the gods?
  • Where's the street-wise Hercules to fight the rising odds?
  • Gay bars.
  • Married.
  • And we're working on the whole "gay marriage" thing so that all the good men will be both married AND in gay bars. Take That, everyone who isn't a gay man!
  • Dead.
  • Not my fault! Er, I mean... terrible thing, that.
  • Just not that into you.
  • Stolen by aliens. Mars needs men.
  • "Good" is relative.
  • They're being ignored by women who want jerks.
  • My address is...
  • They all have boyfriends. Or husbands.
  • Into Hershey's Good Men and Cream! A mouthful of good men in every bite!
    • That's probably the gayest candy bar ever.
  • Well, right now by my clock most of them are at home, asleep in bed. About as many of them will be getting laid as the bad ones are.

• How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
  • According to the ''Monkey Island' games, the correct response here is 'Oh, shut up.'
    • False. The correct response is "A woodchuck would chuck no amount of wood since a woodchuck can't chuck wood." ("Oh, shut up" is the sixth iteration.)
    • But that's an invalid response. The question specifically refers to the condition of the woodchuck being able to chuck wood ("if a woodchuck could chuck wood"). Anyway, I've always accepted the answer as "five," because Red Mage seems to know what he's talking about.
  • What the heck is a woodchuck?
  • A largish-cat-sized rodent that lives in burrows, also known as a groundhog of the "see his shadow, six more weeks of winter" sort. Which is dumb all on its own, since the (astronomical) first day of spring is always six weeks after Feb. 2, but hey.
  • And have you noticed that whatever the groundhog sees on Feb. 2, predicts that we'll see the opposite weather for the next six weeks? Incidentially, since the "first day of spring" is actually the day on which the light from the Sun shines equally on both halves of the earth, which would seem to be right in the middle of the winter-to-summer transition - seriously, wouldn't you expect the weather to be similar on both sides of a solstice? - there's a case to be made for spring actually starting not that long after Feb. 2.
  • Not to mention that there are several cities claiming their groundhog is THE groundhog, usually with conflicting predictions.
  • A woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood!
    • No, it's "A woodchuck would chuck all the wood he could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood." It was the only tongue-twister I could recite, I know.
  • The real question is "how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if it knew it wasn't getting paid?"
  • How much Norris would a Chuck Norris chuck if a Chuck Norris could chuck Norris?

• What is up with 99% of sexual fetishes? Seriously, WHAT. THE. F*CK.
  • Rule Thirty Six
  • I'd be really interested to know what you consider the other 1%. Probably scares the crap out of me.
  • Well, if the Bible has it right, years and years of inbreeding.
  • Inbreeding alone could not POSSIBLY explain some of the things that 'turn people on'.
  • Well, before the internet, it was mostly something that people kept to themselves. which was probably a good thing, since like that awesome novel you write in your head every morning on the way to work, some things become a lot less credible when you decide to share them.
  • ...How do you know about the novel?
  • It's by definition. If it wasn't weird, we wouldn't call it "fetish"
    • Not so. A common fetish in western and Japanese culture is for large breasts - it depends on who is defining fetish, you or the sexologists.
  • If it's considered a fetish in the mainstream media, it's probably one of the weird ones. Like, having a thing for smart girls is apparently much more sane than say, Furry Fandom, but if you need your girlfriend to dress up like Otacon and perfume herself with the smell of stale coffee and sweat and spout technobabble so you can get it up, that becomes a fetish. Either no one has a fetish or everyone does. It's like superpowers.
    • So what does Superpower Lottery correspond to in this case?
    • That woman who's sexually aroused by the Berlin Wall. It doesn't get any weirder.
    • The man with a fetish for extremely intelligent women with reality warping powers inevitably winds up controlling the world when horny?

• Why is it that most nudists are people you don't want to see naked?
  • Most of the population in general are people you don't want to see naked.
  • Okay, then why are people in general so ugly?
  • Then what's the point of strip clubs?
    • Quality control.
    • Why would you go to a restaurant if what you had at home in the bottom of the freezer tasted just as good? Never mind that it's swimming in grease, expensive and likely to give you some exotic disease like fugu.
    • Errr... Fugu is a type of blowfish. It might poison you if the chef's not careful, but it's not going to give you a disease. Plus, you're probably not going to be preparing it at home. (Though you can buy dried fugu as a snack in Japan).

• Why do I hate myself for doing things but do them anyway? Honestly, there's no logic there.
  • The only possible answer is that you're stupid. Or insane. Or both. That's an attractive little package you got going on there.
  • Ok, that's it... Default Answer!

• Why don't more people have mustaches like Tycho Brahe?
  • Because in the time it would take to grow one, their bladders would explode from holding it in too long.
  • And what the hell has my bladder to do with my undernose hair?
  • Because not many people have artificial noses made from some mixture of precious metals? Really!

• Who'd win in a fight, Hillary or Barack?
  • Armed or unarmed?
  • He'd haul her up to the corner of Know Your Role Blvd. and Jabroni Drive and check her candy ass into the Smackdown Hotel, If You SMELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL! What BARACK! ... Is cookin'.
  • Neither. Their fight would start a chain reaction that would eventually involve all Republicans and Democrats, who would gleefully wipe each other out until only one man was left. . .
  • But Mr. Rogers is already dead!
  • ....Or is he?
  • Actually, the WWE just did this one on Monday... turns out that the answer is Umaga.
  • Personally, I think Hillary would fight dirty and Barack would be a crazy-determined Boy Scout in the Clark Kent vein. But John McCain would win in the end, because they'd end up making out anyway and giving up.
• They wouldn't. They're BFF.

• Why am I not allowed to buy items from the grocery store's Deli department with food stamps, but I'm able to from the Bakery? I've been able to buy whole birthday cakes from the bakery, but I'm always denied when I try to buy an eight-piece chicken dinner from the deli. What's up with that?
  • Just for the record... ever though of asking the Deli people? I'd say they're just a bunch of jerks...
  • I haven't asked them specifically, but when I got food stamps the Human Resources people specifically stated they couldn't be used to buy Deli products, and I have tried to buy stuff from the Deli aisle, without success. It just seems weird to me, since if I remember correctly, the reason given for why you couldn't use them to buy Deli items was because they were prepared on-site instead of being prepackaged, yet pretty much all of the items in the bakery are made in the same way.
    • Because the owner has always wanted to say "Let 'em eat cake".

• A phenomenon I've observed for quite a while online bugs the hell out of me, and I haven't gotten an answer about it: why is it that, when someone gets "burned out" over something they're doing (such as writing, drawing, making videos. etc.), or some incident or crisis comes up that detracts them from that, their first reaction is to announce they have to give up what they're doing forever? It never fails; some Furry Fandom artist complains that someone made fun of their artwork or "stole" it and reposted it up somewhere else, they threaten to leave and stop drawing completely; someone who's made a bunch of You Tube videos suddenly has a bad day or has to focus on something else, they automatically announce that they won't be making any more videos ever, and might even shut down their account and pull their stuff off the 'net, as a result. Hardly anyone says "Well, I need to take care of a few things, so I won't be able to do this thing until I get that settled, but I'll return if I can", they just assume that if anything that detracts them from their hobby, that must mean that their hobby isn't worth it, and they need to give it up permanently to deal with what detracted them from it, never returning to it even after the detraction is taken care of. Even more odd, is that more often than not, those same people usually return to doing their hobby after a while, anyway, making their previous statement hypocritical. So, if they know that the hiatus isn't permanent, why act like it is?
  • This answer just needs to be divided in three:
  • Because people are utterly and unnecessary dramatic, specially on internet, and even more specially if they are, actually, unpopular. That attracts attention and care(or hate, but it's attention, nonetheless). In Aimee's words, "People are tricky".
  • Because you're looking at the wrong side of Internet. There's many people around that won't ive up of it "forever" and will, alternatively, improve from their demise. It actually happens.
  • And finally, the way this entry is going, we'll have to create another Default Answer for Real Life.
  • Because that's what burning out is: Getting so fed up with something that you want to run away and go live in a cave.
  • Alternative theory: Because they hope the people that have been annoying them will realize they've really hurt somebody and stop. Though the net being what it is this may backfire.
  • Because they don't want to become the guy who says "I'm kinda busy, so you might not be seeing much from me in the next few weeks," then disappears for six months, only coming back to post one video/picture/comic/etc. and then disappear forever with no warning.
  • The more well-adjusted people who just need to give it up for a few weeks and realize as much will, more often, not make any announcement at all about it, because they don't suffer from the delusion that anyone will actually care whether they disappear for a few weeks and then come back. And by not making an annoucement at all, they haven't lied if they end up not coming back for months, or ever. The same sort of overdramatic people who are prone to make "I'm leaving forever" statements are also the sort who mistakenly believe anyone would care or even notice if they gave up their hobby.

• Why does You Tube have the option to send a video response to someone? Especially when most of the time, people only use it to do an MST 3 K-type of mocking against whatever video they're responding to? Hell, if you're going to come out and say that you don't like someone's video, why waste the time and effort to make a video response, when a simple text response would work just as well?
  • 'Cause it's possible. Google don't wanna take the risk of looking at another site and saying "Damn, they have video responses! And people actually like it! Why haven't we though about it before?" Also, it's useful for other things. Your statement is like saying Internet is useless 'cause it's just a bunch of nerds and porn, and academic information could be easily sent through mail.
  • People are far more likely to watch a video response than read a text comment.
  • Also, responses can be useful for other purposes. A user who goes by the name ItsJustSomeRandomGuy makes a very funny Massively Multiplayer Crossover series between the Marvel and DC universes, known variously as Hi I'm a Marvel...and I'm a DC and Marvel/DC After Hours. Each new video is made as a video response to the previous one, which makes it easy to watch them in order.

• Why are sports and relationships all anyone ever talks about outside of the internet? Seriously, people will just not shut up about these two things. Why?
  • Maybe you should make some new friends? Friends who are interested in feminism and paintings and herbal tea and glue sniffing and embroidery and bee keeping? Conversely, why are anime and American politics all everyone talks about ON the internet?
  • Actually, people on the internet talk more about the internet. And porn.
  • Weird. I almost never say a word about sports or my relationship, and actually I'm the one nerds call "a nerd"(gotta take note of this!) -- i.e., relationship is very low on my list -- , and I still can maintain conversation with people. Am I doing magic, so?
  • This troper, being a fairly recent initiate into middle age, finds that he and has friends now talk incessantly about 401(k)s, home ownership, and health issues. (And while he appears to have been plopped into an Everyone Is Single plot, apparently other people his age also talk incessantly about their children.) Believe me, "sports and relationships" are a lot better than what people could be talking about.
  • Those are presently the socially-acceptable things to be Geeky about.

• What the hell is up with scientists spoiling the ending for everyone before the damn thing is broadcast? I mean, seriously, we have spoiler tags for a reason. Stupid, lab-coated assholes.
  • Like... what?!
  • Hey! It's not our fault the author foreshadowed it so obviously! We thought everybody knew!

• As I asked before The Great Crash, who do I blame for my Character Derailment from The Smart Guy into a Shinji Ikari clone?
  • Hideki Anno.

• Tabletop RP Gs require only paper, writing tools, dice, and printing. We've had those for centuries, so why didn't anybody think of it until the 1970s?
  • Gygax did not die, he just went home. (Come on, you knew he was an alien the first time you saw his name!)
  • A bunch of reasons, at least a few of which are explained in the original version of "Castle Falkenstein" that boil down to: 'proper' people did not use dice for anything. Another is that Gygax was simply the first one to look at the 'classic solids' and extrapolate from the fact that since one of them was a cube, why couldn't he put numbers on the others to generate random numbers?
  • They did exist as probably the oldest tabletop game ever: Miniature tabletop wargaming. Used before the dawn of written history by strategists as a tool to conduct and analyze actual wars or at military academies to groom officers on effective tactics, such passtimes were strongly discouraged amongst the common plebs for fear of uprisings (these bans often extended to chess, I Am Not Making This Up.) As for why all the Warrior Poet classes around the world that spent all their free time playing these kinds of games and writing ballads never thought to combine them, that's a mystery for the ages.
  • For all we know, they may have done. A roman glass d20 went on sale at Christies in 2003, so we know they played SOME form of dice-based game...

• A little explanation for this one: a few years ago, I found members of a forum for a popular indie internet radio talk show whine about how a super-secret assignment the show's host gave them failed for some reason or another; it was so uber-secret, that only the show's host could explain what it entailed. When I talked with him about it, he said the assignment's real goal was to weed out fans who could keep a secret, in order to join some hidden group of his, and that I was just jealous because I missed the memo (and thus couldn't participate), something that his group never does. Now, I won't go into any further detail about this incident, even though several things about it that would need explaining bugs me, but that one accusation of his sticks in my mind: how in the hell can he say that no one in his group could miss a post? As much as the internet is a fountain of information, that same information can easily be lost; forum and group posts have a shelf life of a month or so, if that, before they're abandoned and shoved to the bottom of the pile (which is why people bitch when someone remakes a post that was on there previously; they tell you to use the search function, but more often than not the search function on any group or forum is nigh-useless unless you know exactly what you want to find and where to find itt), most free email accounts have a limited amount of inbox space and a limited amount of time mail can be stored there before it's automatically deleted, and it's impossible to rig it so that you're notified for every new reply to every post in the existence of a group. Both myself and my mate are members of several such communities and moderators for a few of them, and even we miss out on a few things. So what makes him think that his group has achieved the internet Holy Grail of total and complete data retention and distribution?

• How do new species happen? By definition, members of a species can only produce fertile offspring with others of the same species, so how is the barrier jumped? At some point, wouldn't you need a fertile offspring with a different number of chromosomes from its parents?
  • There's no single drop dead point for species, a creature will be a different species from it's Xgreat ancestor, it's child will be a different species from the firsts X-1great ancestor and so on. (note that this comes from a decidedly non-expert).
    • Still doesn't answer the chromosome-count question. (Yes, I'm using three asterisks.)

• The concept of a species is just our invention. There's no point where one suddenly turns into another. Say, rats get into a ship and sail to another continent. They reproduce there for many generations adapting to the new conditions and predators. Maybe at the new place it's advantageous for the rats to be bigger. So over time the bigger rats will survive better, and the average size of the species will grow. Perhaps they'll get large enough to not be able to breed with their ancestors. This won't happen immediately. First maybe 10% will be too large. Then it'll be 20% and so on. At some point you'll have little rats on one continent and big rats on the other. If conditions stay stable, then the rats will mostly stay the same (ie, not growing or shrinking anymore because they're now well suited to their area) and those of not ideal sizes will die out.
• Right, right. And the number-of-chromosomes issue? (On another note, how long until some humans become incapable of breeding with each other? If that'll ever happen barring deliberate genome alteration.)
• Mutations can cause chromosomes to split apart and join together. However, as long they retain reasonable sequence homology, they are still capable of undergoing homologous recombination with those of mates in early zygotes. For example, at some point in the past, Homo chromosomes 12 and 13 fused. This mutation first arose ine some members of the genus, but when they mated with members who had not undergone the split, the fusion chromosome paired up with both 12 and 13; this fusion could be treated as two chromosomes for pairing purposes due to close homology to the separate chromosomes. As time goes on, the fusion became more common, until Homo sapiens completely switched from 48 to 46 pairs of chomosomes.

• The number of chromosomes isn't a hard and fast issue. Vertebrates tend to be relatively staid on the subject, but it isn't uncommon in the insects for an individual of a species to have many, many, many times the number of chromosomes as another member of the same species, and still be interfertile. Even in mammals, it isn't a hard and fast barrier. Przewalski's horse (66 chromosomes) can interbreed with domestic horses (64 chromosomes) and produce fertile offspring (65 chromosomes). Generally speaking, the more genetically unlike two animals are, the less chance to interbreed they have. So, "same species yes/no" isn't really an accurate picture of the situation.
• Here's a post from Pharyngula from a few years ago about how changes in chromosome number happen.

• The Westboro Baptist Church...just WHY??????
  • Well, if you believe another bunch of idiots, it's because the Westboroers are a Secret Cable of Evil Atheists out to make religion look bad! Or, you can try the sane answer: Some people are very, very stupid.
  • They're just trolling.
  • You know, I have a theory. In the grand scheme of things, they exist for the sole purpose of having someone around that EVERYONE hates. Even Jerry Falwell didn't like the Westboro Baptist Church. So, like Dr. Kelso said in an episode of Scrubs, they are uniters, in that they unite people with different opinions against them.

• Where does that one sock go in the dryer?
  • Outside the drum - I heard of a guy who opened one up

• Jesus Christ preached about peace, forgiveness, and railed against classism and bigotry. Why then, are his followers frequently such self-righteous, vindictive, violent, snobbish gits? I don't even Jesus could've expected the Spanish Inquizition.
  • Because he said other things such as "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword" (Matthew 10:34) and "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him" (John 3:36). Usually when authority figures read the Bible, they look for what goes along with their personal moral views and ignore the rest.
    • But couldn't that go the other way? I mean, I personally think Joseph Stalin made a lot of good points, but I certainly don't agree with the majority of his ideas. Couldn't you also look at all the good things people like him said and use this to credit him? And besides, a lot of people hate religion, but love Jesus. Bill Maher even called him the greatest teacher ever, and he hates religion. Even George Carlin admires Jesus.
  • “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” - Gandhi
    • Ah, Gandhi. The most badass pacifist of all time. He's an inspiration for us all. I am not being ironic or facetious here. I honestly think that Gandhi was a badass.
  • Because most Christians aren't self-righteous, vindictive, violent, snobbish gits, it's just that, to paraphrase an earlier line, the biggest bastards tend to have the loudest voices.
    • I concur. Also- this troper remembers a line in the Westminster Confession or something about how some branches of the church will get so caught up in themselves that they start serving Satan, as well as that whole bit in the epistles about avoiding faction... so, what's wrong here? People, for the love of Pete.

• What happens if a devout Muslim dies before he or she becomes sexually mature? Wouldn't those 72 virgins be a tad disappointed?
  • For that matter, where does Allah get the virgins? Is Muslim heaven set up so that anybody who dies before having sex gets to be the love-slave of someone who did get some first? Does it even specify that they'll be female virgins?
    • Strictly speaking these supposed virgins are houri, which are essentially beautiful creatures created for "companionship," which you can, of course, take any way you want to amidst the other sensual delights of the Muslim description of heaven. (They may be metaphorical, and indeed many Muslim intellectuals say exactly that.) While this troper's knowledge of the Qur'an is admittedly limited, he's never heard anything about the exact 72 of them, and the verse itself is quite controversial.
    • In some interpretations, they're said to be "beautiful youths" who may be of either gender or none, and perhaps more like angels or jinn than humans. They're also said to have translucent skin through which one can see their (glowing) veins, which is a rather odd standard of beauty to say the least.
  • Now I'm not an expert here, my only real exposure to Muslim culture is through Persepolis and Not Without My Daughter, but according to the former, if an Islamic man dies a virgin, they set up a symbolic "Nuptial chamber" in the street so they may attain carnal knowledge after death. Also, the 72 virgin business is at best an exaggeration of what the Qur'an might actually say.
    • Some translat