Comments on: Show Off Your Smarts!

By: Spanky

Spanky — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 17:09:16 +0000

RE: Birds and Rice:

I had always heard this one explained that since the rice is not cooked, and the bird can in fact break up the rice when it eats it, that the problem lies when the bird then drinks water after eating the rice, as the rice will expand as it absorbs the water, thus distending their stomachs. /end runon

By: Brent

Brent — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 20:12:55 +0000

The thing about boiling water also has to do with circulation. When the boiling water is put into the freezer, the vast temperature differences create currents within the ice cube. The hot water moves up to the top, chills, and falls down again. It’s the same concept as stirring your drink with ice cubes to get them to melt faster (and in doing so chill the drink faster.)

By: Veronica

Veronica — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 01:50:33 +0000

Praise God that the only educated person alive (you best hide becasue according to this genius every other educated person knows the truth) read this blog and sent in the rebuttal to the myth that all educated people know that the colonies were started on the premise of prostitution and alcoholism. If I could I’d thump brainiac on the head…dolt!

By: Liz

Liz — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 04:38:26 +0000

Re: hot vs cold water boiling faster – I think the explanation by “mik” makes sense – once both are down to room temp, the originally hot water freezes faster because there is now less of it – makes perfect sense, so it’s easy to see where that particular myth came from. I think I just have to try it myself now.

These were all really interesting.

Liz

By: mike

mike — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 19:48:03 +0000

To Phillip:

There were two areas of colonies. The southern colonies of Virginia were indeed settled with the goal of bringing profits to its companies shareholders, but the colonies in Massachusetts were founded by Puritans who wanted to show mother England how a true god-loving society could (and should) function. The Charlestown community was founded by some the most literate and well-off middle-class members of English society. So many of these intelligent Puritans left England between 1630 and 1640, that Charles I then banned emmigration to America.
The Massachusetts colonies DID base everything they did on religion. The Puritans believed that every aspect of ones life should be weighed and judged based on wether it complimented or detracted from worshipping God.
Of course things changed a bit over the next 150 years, so by the time the constitution was written, the forefathers recognized that the government shouldn’t be controlled by a religious belief AND that religious belief shouldn’t be controlled by the government.

By: Mik

Mik — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 18:34:40 +0000

My daughter did the Hot v Cold water freezing experiment as a school project.
If you take two equal amounts of water, one boiling and the other cold or room temperature, and put them in the freezer, the container of boiling water will in fact freeze before the other container.
Why? While both containers will lose heat on their way to becoming ice, the boiling water will cool at a faster rate, i.e. it will release more heat than the container of cold water until both containers are just above freezing. At that point the the container that started with boiling water will freeze before the other container because it now has less water. It has less water because it lost all that heat through evaporation.

By: Erin

Erin — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 15:21:07 +0000

re: the Emancipation Proclamation. It terms of morale move, it was indeed great for the North–and also for Southern slaves who heard about it. Talk about incentive to flee “masters!” Yes, it freed slaves only in areas in “rebellion,” and of course those areas did not recognize the proclamation. But it did inspire many slaves in those areas to flee to the North or areas under Union control, hence helping to free them.

As well, the whole issue of whether or not it truly freed any slaves comes down to how people view the war: as a civil war in which the South had no right to secede (and was therefore still bound by presidential proclamations) or as a war between two different nations after the South legitimately left the Union. The debate over the South’s right to secede will likely never die. Perhaps, then, students should be introduced to *both* sides and allowed to debate them & decide for themselves, rather than being taught one as gospel.

Rather than start another war, I won’t address Lincoln’s views on slavery. :)

By: Phillip Edwards

Phillip Edwards — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 22:19:18 +0000

Back on the political track of myths such as Paul Revere and the Emancipation Proclamation. The most annoying myth, in my opinion, is that the United States was founded on the basis of Christian principles. This obvious personification of ignorance astonishes anyone who is well educated because of two very important factors.
1) The fact that the original settlers of this land came for religious freedom is true, but the real reason that the colonies were established was for economic reasons (tobacco and trade). These established colonies were obviously not trying to base everything they did off of religious pecepts and instead indulged themselves more-or-less in such “sins” as prostitution and alcoholism.
2)The writers of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence were mostly “deists” that didn’t follow any mainstream religion and thusly couldn’t write a framework for a nation based on a Christianity when they themselves were not!

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 01:46:49 +0000

The yam is the tuber of a tropical vine – often found in Latin and Caribbean markets whereas the sweet potato is the storage root of a plant in the morning glory family and it is grown in the U.S.

By: Larissa R.

Larissa R. — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 22:09:48 +0000

What about the one that says yams and sweet potatoes are the same? So much confusion over a name! (If you haven’t heard this one, just type yams vs sweet potatoes into your favorite search engine.)