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Stump
Me Questions Answered in December 2001
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Q.: Which country has the oldest continuously serving government in the world?
Where is that country? What is the government's name?
What does that name mean?
- John M.
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A.:
OK, here are you answers in the order you asked them: 1) Isle of Man, a British crown dependency.
2) Western Europe, in the Irish Sea, between Ireland and Great Britain.
3) Tynwald.
4) There's no exact translation, but it may be taken to mean
"the place of meeting of a public governing body."
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Q.: What are the ten languages spoken by most people world wide as a mother tongue, listed in order (most to least)?
- Liam D.
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A.: The Summer Institute for Linguistics' Ethnologue Survey
in 1999 lists the following as the top languages by population (number of native speakers
are in parentheses):
Chinese (937,132,000)
Spanish (332,000,000)
English (322,000,000)
Bengali (189,000,000)
Hindi/Urdu (182,000,000)
Arabic (174,950,000)
Portuguese (170,000,000)
Russian (170,000,000)
Japanese (125,000,000)
German (98,000,000)
French (79,572,000)
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Q.: The term "Card Shark" is
wrong. What is the proper term?
- No Name Given
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A.: Card
sharp.
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Q.: Who
was Peter Falk (Columbo) modeled after in real life?
- No Name Given
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A.: Well,
I would hope that Peter Falk would be modeled after his
parents. Lt. Columbo (no first name was ever given), on
the other hand, was modeled him after Petrovich, the detective in Dostoyevsky's
Crime and Punishment."
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Q.: What country still maintains the longest surviving democracy?
- Zach V.
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A.: Believe
it or not, the answer is the United States of America.
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Q.: 1)
What is wrong with the flag on a Canadian two dollar bill?
2) Is a polar bear primarily right handed or left handed?
3) How many ridges are on a dime?
- Stephanie S.
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A.: 1)
Paul Wallis of www.CdnPaperMoney.com
sent me this reply:
"I’ve heard the one about the American flag on the Canadian $2 note a million times. I’ve even seen it in newspapers and on TV news. The only problem is, just like any sovereign nation, we don’t generally make mistakes with our flag. It’s not true and your visitor has been reading too much of the un-researched trivia on the internet. There is NOTHING wrong with the flag on the Canadian 1986 $2 note."
2) Jonathan H. sent me a link
that answered your question, According to http://www.polarbearsalive.org,
"Another recurrent myth is that the great white bears are left-pawed. Scientists observing the animals haven't noticed a preference. In fact, polar bears seem to use their right and left paws equally."
3) 118.
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Q.: There is a common English word that is seven letters long. Each time you remove a letter from it, it still remains a common English word - from seven letters right on down to a single letter. What is the original word, and what are the words that it becomes after removing a letter at a time?
- Sherry
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A.: Actually,
there are a few words that can do this, but only one can really
be considered common: Creates. The words are:
Creates
Create
Crate
Rate
Ate
At
A
Thanks to Jheriko for the answer.
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Q.: My father initially started asking this question during the mid-eighties on late-night weekend radio trivia shows here in St. Louis. The question is this:
On the television show M*A*S*H, did Radar O'Reily's teddy bear have a name, and if so, what was it's name?
- Scott I.
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A.: Believe
it or not, there are actually fan sites for this. Radar had his faithful teddy bear for more than 7 years, but his bear never had a name.
We first saw the bear in I Hate a Mystery (episode
10). While searching the camp for some stolen articles, Colonel Blake uncovered Radar's bunk and found the bear there.
In Officer of the Day, Radar told Hawkeye that the bear was a gift from his brother.
In War of Nerves, Radar was worried about the fact he still sleeps with the bear; Sidney tells him he'll probably give up the bear when he goes home.
Sidney's theory proved true when Radar left the bear on Hawkeye's bunk in
Goodbye Radar, Part II. Hawkeye put the teddy bear in the time capsule in
As Time Goes By (episode 250).
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Q.: Which classic film was promoted under the slogan:
"Don't give away the ending - it's the only one we have?"
- Ange
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A.: Psycho.
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Q.: What is the origin of the saying, "know thy enemy?"
- Ann C.
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A.: This
is a classic line from The Art of War by Sun Tzu Wu.
The full sentence is, "Know thy enemy and know thy self and you will win a hundred battles.”
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Q.: What does
F.A.B. stand for in the thunderbirds episodes?
- Michelle M.
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A.: This
answer comes right from the source:
"In response to by far the most frequently asked question about Thunderbirds recieved here, F.A.B. does not actually stand for anything but is simply a shortened version of the word
'fabulous'."
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Q.: Do you have a day job? if so, what is it? and how much do you make?
- Zach A.
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A.: Yes, I do have a day job, which is
one of the reasons I'm so far behind in answering all these Stump Me questions.
I'm the Director of Marketing for a medical software company in South Florida.
As for how much I make, well...I'll keep that private.
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Q.: I need to find the origin of the word "pee" or
"peeing." Why is it a slang for urinating?
This is for real, to try and get an A on my science test.
- Alex
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A.: What
kind of class is this? According to The Macquarie Dictionary and Cassell's Dictionary of Slang, pee was originally a euphemistic pronunciation of the first letter of the word
"piss." It started being used sometime during the 20th century.
Good luck on your test.
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Q.: What
are the answers to these word games:
1) 1000 = W that a P is W
2) 6=PW.
- Harold M.
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A.: 1)
Picture is worth 1,000.
2) Six pennies worth.
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Q.: Why can't we eat meat on Good
Friday?
- Slither
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A.: There
are two schools of thought:
Catholic Church's Official Position
The law of abstinence requires a Catholic 14 years of age until death to abstain from eating meat on Fridays in honor of the Passion of Jesus on Good Friday. Meat is considered to be the flesh and organs of mammals and fowl. Also forbidden are soups or gravies made from them. Salt and freshwater species of fish, amphibians, reptiles and shellfish are permitted, as are animal derived products such as margarine and gelatin which do not have any meat taste.
Doubters:
In the medieval days, the Church has significant interests in the fishing industry. Seeing that the fishing business was slow in comparison to meat farmers, the Church decreed that Christians must abstain from meat-eating on Good Fridays. As a result, seafood consumption grew exponentially, as did the Church's profits.
I'm not even going to pretend to know the
truth. After all, I'm Jewish and it doesn't concern me.
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Q.: What
is the only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating
a letter?
- Veronica
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A.: Thanks to Jheriko & Zach
A. for the following: Uncopyrightable.
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Q.: 1)
How many
times is God's name mentioned in the Bible.
2) Why can't rubbing alcohol make you drunk?
- Justin
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A.: 1)
Depends
on which Bible your talking about. God's name, represented by four consonants, appears 6,828 times in the
Old Testament, or Hebrew Scriptures.
Michael Hutching, using the software program
"Godspeed," found that the word "God" appears exactly
4,444 times in the King James Bible. By the way, the word
"Lord" occurs 7,836 times.
2) Make you drunk? It could
kill you if ingested. Rubbing alcohol is isoprophyl alcohol,
while the alcohol in liquor is ethyl alcohol or ethanol. Rubbing alcohol closes the skin’s pores and prevents heat loss
which is why it's used in colognes and after shave.
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Q.: How many game titles were released for the Sega
Genesis?
- No Name Given
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A.: 879.
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Q.: 1)
What is the earth's water percentages?
2) What about lakes, rivers, ice caps, and the atmosphere?
- Kelly G.
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A.: The earth has different types of water:
Oceans 97.2% of total water
Ice caps/glaciers 2.38%
Ground water 0.397%
Surface water (e.g., lakes, rivers, streams, ponds) 0.022%
Atmosphere 0.001%
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Q.: Do
you remember a movie with Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn
where they want to install a computer to replace the
girls working at some place?
- No Name Given
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A.: You're
thinking of Desk Set (1957).
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Q.: Why is the small dish for side dishes in a diner called a "monkey dish?"
- Carl E.
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A.: I
searched everywhere for the answer to this one, and I'm not even
sure if this is 100% right (although I'm about 85% sure).
For what I've been able to track down, it comes from the little hat that a hurdy gurdy man's monkey wore.
When the monkey's hat was taken off its head and tipped over to accept change, it resembles
the little dish known in restaurants as a monkey dish.
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Q.: What is the origin of the
button mouse that is on a laptop (the ones that are hard to use)?
- No Name Given
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A.: It
actually has a name: the TrackPoint. The TrackPoint was
conceived in 1984 by an IBM engineer named Ted Selker.
Selker had read a study that it took 3/4 seconds for a computer
user to shift his hand from the keyboard to the mouse, and
another three-quarters of a second to shift it back again.
His solution? Build a mouse attacked to a stick between
the "G" and "H" keys. But,
unfortunately. he had other projects and the mouse idea was
shelved.
Fast forward three years when Selker
showed his idea to IBM mathematician Joseph Rutledge. The
two then built a prototype and tried to convince that management
of IBM that the stick-mouse was a good idea. They hated
it.
It wasn't until John Cox, a senior
administrator at IBM, saw the mouse that things started taking
off. Cox liked the idea, but suffered a stroke before he
could do something about it. When some of his co-workers visited him in the hospital and asked if he wanted anything,
Cox said, "Get me one of Ted Selker's keyboards."
And the rest is history.
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Q.: Exactly how many calories are in a standard postage stamp?
- Jessica P.
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A.: Trying
to stay on your diet? Licking a postage stamp will set you back
anywhere from 2 to 8 calories, depending on how well you lick it.
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Q.: You
can see 30,000 of these _____ in 30 minutes.
- No Name Given
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A.: Believe
it or not, it's the estimated number of items in a grocery
store.
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Q.: Why do full-blooded Native Americans lack facial hair?
- Chris D.
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A.: This
is just another popular misconception. Native Americans
have the ability to grow facial hair. Native American men from Pacific Coast
tribes often have heavy facial hair while other Native American men
tend not to have much.
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