BIG QUESTIONS

Paper cut image via ShutterstockThere are a couple things at play here, some involving the paper, some involving your skin. For one thing, what part of your body comes in contact with paper the most?

The birds themselves? Not a whole lot. Chickens don’t even get infected by the virus — varicella zoster, a member of the herpes family — that causes the rash.

Some animals have it made. Their whole day revolves around eating and having sex (and, to be fair, trying not to get eaten themselves). And when winter arrives, they get to curl up somewhere and wait things out until the weather is nice again. Can humans

Trauma, that’s what. It’s the smell of chemical defenses and first aid. The fresh, “green” scent of a just-mowed lawn is the lawn trying to save itself from the injury you just inflicted.

The Murphy Bed, also known as a wall bed, fold down bed or pull down bed, is a bed that’s hinged at one end so it can be folded up and stored vertically against a wall or in a closet.

Did the Nazis Have a Secret Antarctic Fortress? Like many conspiracy theories, there are some elements of truth to it all. But whether the facts can be woven together into one cohesive narrative without having to make great leaps of logic is another matte

The Gideon Bible is not some special version or translation of the Bible that hotels really like (the books are usually plain old King James Versions); they're named for the group that distributes them.

Reader Sarah wrote in to ask, “If you eat a person who has an infectious disease, will you get the disease too? A morbid question I thought of while sitting in a doctor’s office and was too shy to

Reader Bill wrote in to ask, “Why does the sound of running water make me want to pee—and sometimes

You hear the term all the time, but is there really anything special about grand juries? Not on the surface. Like a regular trial jury, a grand jury is selected and sworn in by a court, and are often, in fact, pulled from the same pool of people as trial

Reader rccola20 wrote in to ask, "Are bloodhounds really that much better at tracking than other dog

So I'm up in Seattle this week, staying at a hotel some blocks from the original Starbucks (which, it turns out, isn't REALLY the original, but rather the second location, which was situated better for marketing purposes, but who's counting).