The MakeMeThinner Support Forum

[MISSANNE]

Here are a few things to think about that you probably have never thought about:


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Can you cry under water?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Why do you have to "put your two cents in".. . but it's only a "penny for your thoughts"? Where's that extra penny going to?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Once you're in heaven, do you get stuck wearing the clothes you were buried in for eternity?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Why does a round pizza come in a square box?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


What disease did cured ham actually have?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


How is it that we put man on the moon before we figured out it would be a good idea to put wheels on luggage?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Why is it that people say they "slept like a baby" when babies wake up like every two hours?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


If a deaf person has to go to court, is it still called a hearing?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Why are you IN a movie, but you're ON TV?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Why do people pay to go up tall buildings and then put money in binoculars to look at things on the ground?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Why do doctors leave the room while you change? They're going to see you naked anyway.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Why is "bra" singular and "panties" plural

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Why do toasters always have a setting that burns the toast to a horrible crisp, which no decent human being would eat?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Can a hearse carrying a corpse drive in the carpool lane?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


If the professor on Gilligan's Island can make a radio out of a coconut, why can't he fix a hole in a boat?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Why does Goofy stand erect while Pluto remains on all fours? They're both dogs!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


If Wiley E. Coyote had enough money to buy all that ACME crap, why didn't he just buy dinner?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


If corn oil is made from corn, and vegetable oil is made from vegetables, what is baby oil made from?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Do the Alphabet song and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star have the same tune?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Why did you just try singing the two songs above?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Why do they call it an asteroid when it
is outside the atmosphere, but call it a hemorrhoid when it's in your butt? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[JeepGirl]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Assassination is indeed a subset of murder. Assassination is murder for political reasons.

Were President George W. Bush shot in a car jacking, I'd call that murder, as I would if President Bill Clinton were killed by someone because of a love quarrel.

But if someone kills their mayor because of a zoning issue, that's assassination.

There are shades of gray, of course, and just where interpersonal relations become politics I don't know.

Assassins have (or work for people that have) political reasons to perform the deed.

I actually had to do a debate on this in college

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Few More
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Who named the colors and how did they get their names?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why is the weight measure "pound" abbreviated "lb"?

[Allie]

Why do we park on a DRIVE WAY, and drive on a PARKWAY?

[BerkshireGrl]

Why is the weight measure "pound" abbreviated "lb"?

Aha, good question! Nerdliness follows!

From "Dr. Math" at mathforum dot org:

Why Is 'Pound' Abbreviated 'lb'?

Why is "pound" abbreviated lb? The abbreviation does not match the
word. Is it because of its Latin roots? I know libra means pound,
but what is the real answer? What is the history of it?

Answer:
The abbreviation is not a shortening of the English word pound, but of the Latin word libra, which was an equivalent unit. Here is one of many discussions on the web that say more about it...

pound (lb, lbm, or #) [1]
a traditional unit of mass or weight. The Romans used a pound
(the libra pondo, "pound of weight") divided into 12 ounces. All
the countries of western Europe used similar units, divided into
12 or 16 ounces, until the advent of the metric system. 12-ounce
pounds were common in Italy and southern France, but in Spain
and northern Europe 16-ounce pounds became the norm. The word
libra is used for this unit in Italy, Spain, and Portugal; in
France it is called the livre. Further north, the Latin word
pondo ("weight") is the origin of the names of the English pound,
Dutch pond, Danish pund, German pfund, and Russian funt. In
England, two different "pound" units became standard. The unit
now in general use in the United States is the avoirdupois pound,
so-called from a French phrase avoir du poids, literally "goods
of weight," indicating simply that the goods were being sold by
weight rather than by volume or by the piece. The avoirdupois
pound is divided into 16 ounces. By international agreement, one
avoirdupois pound is equal to exactly 453.59237 grams; this is
exactly 175/144 = 1.215 28 troy pounds. See avoirdupois weights
for additional information. The traditional symbol lb stands for
libra, the Latin word for the unit. The avoirdupois pound is
sometimes abbreviated lb av or lb ap to distinguish it from the
less common troy pound.

(Note that both "pound" and "lb" come from the Latin phrase "libra
pondo"; "pound" literally means merely "weight"!)

We use mismatched abbreviations in English more than you may realize.
Several abbreviations we use come from Latin, though we read them
aloud in English: "etc." for "et cetera" ("and the rest") and "i.e."
for "id est" ("that is"). And several other abbreviations for English
words are really abbreviations of foreign words: "oz." for old Italian
"onza" (ounce), and "no." for Italian or Latin "numero" (number).

Why do we do this? In at least some of these cases, it was because
Latin was the main scholarly language when the abbreviations came
into use, so people who wrote tended to think in Latin and to write
as if they'd rather be writing Latin! The Latin word was thought of
as the "real" word, and the English word just as the way to
communicate with common people. It may be that "lb" was used as an
international standard of sorts (though I don't believe the pound had
the same weight from one country to another); in a similar way we use
abbreviations for chemical elements that do not match our English
names for them (such as Na for sodium, from Latin "natrium") because
the symbols are the same in all countries though the names are not.
In any case, English has always been a borrowing language; mixing
foreign words into English sentences has been common from the beginning.

I haven't been able to find any detailed history of the abbreviation;
perhaps the Oxford English Dictionary would help to confirm when and
how "lb" was first used--whether in a Latin context or English, and
whether it meant the English pound or not. I'll try to look it up
next time I get a chance.

- Doctor Peterson, The Math Forum

[GucciGoo]

Why don't sheep shrink when it rains?

Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?

If the #2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still #2?

Why do you press harder on a remote-control when you know the battery is weak?

Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways?

[BerkshireGrl]

Who named the colors and how did they get their names?

This got me thinking too... and I thought I'd geek out a bit and research the colors of the rainbow

RED: Middle English, from Old English rEad; akin to Old High German rOt red, Latin ruber & rufus, Greek erythros

ORANGE: Middle English, from Anglo-French orrange, araunge, from Old Occitan auranja, from Arabic nAranj, from Persian nArang, from Sanskrit nAranga orange tree

YELLOW: Middle English yelwe, yelow, from Old English geolu; akin to Old High German gelo yellow, Latin helvus light bay, Greek chlOros greenish yellow, Sanskrit hari yellowish

GREEN: Middle English grene, from Old English grEne; akin to Old English grOwan to grow

BLUE: Middle English, from Anglo-French blef, blew, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German blAo blue

PURPLE: Middle English purpel, alteration of purper, from Old English purpuran of purple, genitive of purpure purple color, from Latin purpura, from Greek porphyra

Speaking of colors, did you know that the Hindus have an annual festival in honor of Color? Funny considering they contributed towards 2 of the above colors, orange & yellow! It's called the Festival of Holi and it is celebrated on the full moon day in the 30 days between February 20-March 21 So sorta kinda akin to Mardi Gras in New Orleans

For a beautiful page on it, see www dot thecolorsofindia dot com

Here is a little blurb on it:

The Holi Festival is known as the "Festival of Color" and is a celebration of Lord Krishna and God's Creations. The colorful festival of Holi, literally means 'burning', is celebrated on the full moon day in the month of Phalguna and heralds the onset of spring season. Holi is the time when people from all castes and social strata come together forgetting all past differences and grievances.

[Mike]

Why are the called apartments when they are all stuck together?