Persistent, Niggling Questions

[Nate the Great]

Where did the chicken/road joke come from in the first place?

How did man come up with the idea of milking cows? If you take a step back, it's a bit of an icky concept, right?

Will Paramount ever license and distribute New Voyages and other "professional" fanfilms?

Why is Starfleet Command in San Francisco?

Did humpback whales go extinct again because of an insufficiently diverse gene pool?

United Earth Space Probe Agency? Who would come up with that name?

[KillerGodMan]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

Why is Starfleet Command in San Francisco?

Um... because it was Xindi'd when it was in Florda?

Why do hotdogs come in packages of ten, but hotdog buns come in packages of eight?

[Nate the Great]

Thank you! The hot dog conundrum is undoubtedly one reason why I lay awake some nights wondering at the general weirdness in the world.

[Nate the Great]

This is one dead horse that I'm still beating, but I still get ticked off every single time I see "Coca-Cola Classic" on a can or bottle. Why? Everything else is "Coke." Vanilla Coke, Cherry Coke, Diet Coke, etc. Why not a product just labeled "Coke?"

How did artifical raspberry flavor get associated with the color blue? Yeah, yeah, cherry has a monopoly on red and there are blue raspberries, but most raspberries are, in fact, red.

Wouldn't it be a smart idea to have an "Unnecessary 'E' Tax," as posited by Dave Barry?

[Katy Jane]

the reason they put coca-cola classic on the can is because at one point they changed the flavor of coke and called it "new coke" nobody liked it so they changed it back and started labeling it "coca-cola" classic. Everything else leaves off the classic, because its not "coca-cola" classic.

[Nate the Great]

Yes, but there's no such thing as "New Coke" anymore. In those few places where people actually drink it, it's "Coke 2." Ergo, just "Coke" is open and available. It should be used because no one says "Waiter, I'd like a Coca-Cola Classic." Ever.

In fact, the whole thing smacks of paranoia. It's as if the Coke company is afraid that people might confuse normal Coke with New Coke/Coke 2, buy it, and then sue Coca-Cola for selling the wrong product.

[Nate the Great]

Okay, I'd like someone to debunk a theory for me.

I've often thought about the "impossibility" of constructing a perpetual motion machine. Now of course you can't build one that you can actually get energy out of, but what about something that will just go on forever and not stop?

Step One:

Build a sphere out of artificial diamond. Pure diamond, no defects, absolutely uniform crystal lattice in all directions.

Step Two:

Go out into space and find a location where gravitational and electromagnetic effects from all locations are absolutely uniform. It'll probably be midway between two galaxies.

Step Three:

Plant your diamond in that location and give it a nudge to spin it. There you go, a moving object with nothing to stop it. Certainly not a USEFUL machine, but perpetual motion.