10 Curious Questions and Answers
Published on October 17, 2007 - 74 Comments
Ten curious questions you never thought to ask, and their answers:
Q: If a smoker goes in to a coma for long enough, do they wake up without a craving to smoke?
A: It takes around 8 days for nicotine to completely leave the bloodstream, taking with it the physical craving. If a person is in a coma for longer, they would not have cravings for nicotine when they wake up, though they may still feel the effects of the habitual nature of smoking.
Q: What is the temperature at the tip of a burning cigarette?
A: 1292 Fahrenheit (700 celsius) when the smoker inhales. It is cooler between puffs.
Q: When will the world end?
A: Unless a major catastrophe occurs beforehand, in 4.4 billion years the sun will cease to provide heat and light.
Q: If you fell out of a space ship and held your breath, how long would it take you to die?
A: Holding your breath in space is likely to damage your lungs. You have about 15 seconds before your pass out and die in Space, due to lack of Oxygen.
Q: What are the average wages of a porn star?
A: From 50 - 1,500 dollars per scene. Women generally earn more than men, and successful stars can earn six figure salaries.
Q: In which countries is prostitution legal?
A: Parts of Australia, Parts of the USA, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and a number of other nations. For a more complete list (in case you are planning your vacation) try this Wikipedia article.
Q: What country is Timbuktu in?
A: Timbuktu is in Mali, West Africa
Q: How much does a mail order bride cost?
A: $5,000 is about the overall going rate
Q: Who invented the drinks can?
A: Ermal Fraze of Dayton, Ohio, invented it in 1963. It us US Patent 3,349,949
Q: If you tied buttered toast to the back of a cat and dropped it from a height, what would happen?
A: The cat would land on its feet as they can twist in mid-air to ensure they land feet down. Toast only has mythical power to land butter side down.
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1. Samsung - October 17th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
great list The buttered cat paradox is hilarious but I prefer the theory that this situation will produce an anti gravity effect. The cat slows down then starts rotating as both sides try to land the way their supposed to. look it up on wikipedia:)
2. Juggz - October 17th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
nice list, would be nice to see more Q&A though. I felt unsatisfied with only 10
3. Daniel - October 17th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Don’t be so quick to assume that old wives’ wisdom is false, jfrater! Several groups of physicists and mathematicians have demonstrated that bread dropped from a plate actually does tend to fall buttered side down — although you are correct in your assertion that it’s not because of any intrinsic property of the bread; it’s merely a function of the speed at which falling bread tends to rotate, and the average height of a breakfast table (which gives bread time to rotate 1.5 times on the way down).
Your estimate for unprotected survival in space is also a little pessimistic. Holding your breath is likely to damage your lungs — you should exhale as you leave the airlock — but if you do exhale, the situation isn’t too grim. According to NASA, you’re looking at at least half a minute before you suffer any permanent injury, although sunburn, bruising, and the bends will become uncomfortable after about 10 seconds (but at that point, you’ll probably just be thinking how cool it is that the saliva on your tongue is boiling). You’ll black out at some point around the 15 second mark, but your crewmates can still haul you in; it’s an inexact science, but you probably have up to 2 minutes out in the cold before you’re dead.
4. jfrater - October 17th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Daniel: wow - that is such a revolting description of an unprotected space experience! You should write me a list!
Juggz: I was unsatisfied with 10 too, but it is cheese and bacon flan for dinner and I had to leave the computer
Samsung: I am definitely going to look it up - I am quite astonished that it is actuallly mentioned on wikipedia!
5. Juggz - October 17th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
jfrater: always about the food isn’t it?
6. Jackie - October 17th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
jamie: cheese and bacon flan? what the heck is that?
7. Adam W. - October 17th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
I’ve tried the bread thing with no less than 50 cats and managed to warp space time itself with all the anti-gravity spinning and created a wormhole into another universe. Muwhaha.
8. joshw - October 17th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
great list, you should make a list of weird questions like “why do we park in driveways but drive on parkways.”
9. JT - October 17th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Prostituton is legal in the Netherlands surely? I went there once and they had shops where women who stand like mannequins and you could pick a girl as you pleased.
I didnt actually do this by the way, I just observed it.
I mean I actually observed it from outiside the shop, I was too young to participate. Not that I would anyway.
10. Cyn - October 17th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
love this list!
11. Jon - October 17th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
The toast would land butter side down, then the cat would flip over and land on its feet. All without the cat touching the ground until the last moment.
12. Hobolad - October 17th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
@JT: I think it’s technically illegal, but just not prosecuted. What I heard anyway.
13. jfrater - October 17th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
JT doth protest too much, methinks!
14. JT - October 17th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
No, I’m pretty sure its legal. I read an article a while ago about how it was free for the disabled. I’ll check wikipedia.
15. Yarr - October 17th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
JT-
Suuurrree you wouldn’t. :0p
16. JT - October 17th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Yep. Here we go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.....gal_status
17. SUN - October 17th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
http://www.dukemednews.org/new.....mp;index=1
Nicotine leaving the bloodstream does NOT take with it the craving. I know your intent was innocent but as someone who quit in 2000 and has coped with nicotine demand since, thats wrong. Sometimes you do just crave it mentally, other times its a demand so strong it feels like suffocation or being crushed, a constant unbearable pressure and very physical. Like getting your assed kicked from the inside. Addiction isnt just mental. Sorry, sore subject.
18. jaw - October 17th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
prostitution is legal in Las Vegas, Nevada, US
19. J. Coustark. - October 17th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
New South Wales isn’t a country, It’s in Australia.
20. ImplosiveFire - October 17th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
J Coustark.: notice how it says New South Wales, Australia and then ; New Zealand.
Prostitution is only legal in Australia in the State of NSW.
21. J. Coustark. - October 17th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
ImplosiveFire.
Thank you, I stand corrected
22. sarahj - October 17th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
I think I know you J.Coustark
23. Diogenes - October 17th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
In my fourth grade science class, we use to drop buttered toast tied to black cats all the time …and Daniel, your wrong.
24. amanda - October 17th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
Smokers do feel cravings for many years if not forever, because nicotine causes your brain to produce excess dopamine. After a while your dopamine center is burned out, and nicotine is the only way to get it because your brain can no longer make it on it’s own. That’s why it’s so hard to quit smoking. Your brain is altered.
25. SarahJ - October 17th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
It says countries not States so therefore NSW is wrong
26. strych9 - October 17th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
Jamie, you forgot to answer Jackie’s question, “cheese and bacon flan? what the heck is that?”
Hehe. I’m quite curious myself. Is it some kind of quiche?
27. jfrater - October 17th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Hey - sorry for not replying - Cheese and Bacon flan is a type of quiche but it has a softer filling than quiche
28. jfrater - October 17th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Wow - talk about taking a beating!
29. jfrater - October 17th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
I have corrected the prostitution question.
30. Yarr - October 17th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
“Just a few other nations.”
Great.
Thanks for helping me plan my vacation Jamie!
31. jfrater - October 17th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Yarr: so as to not spoil your holiday, I have updated the item AGAIN!
J Coustark and SarahJ: now now - no ganging up on me
32. jfrater - October 17th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Juggz: comment 5: I do have other interests! I just don’t let them show
33. someguy - October 18th, 2007 at 12:13 am
HAHAHAHAHA MORTAL FOOLS THE WORLD WILL END IN 2012 DUE TO CANCER FUSEING WITH AIDS TO MAKE THE ZOMBIE VIURS WHICH WILL KILL US ALL also great list man i love this site
34. george - October 18th, 2007 at 5:23 am
so what happens if you strap 2 cats together back-to-back and drop them?
35. evan - October 18th, 2007 at 5:46 am
George, you dont want know, YOU DONT WANT TO KNOW!
36. johnny - October 18th, 2007 at 8:05 am
your prostitution answer is so misleading as to be basically incorrect; prostitution is legal in quite more than “a few” countries. according to the wikipedia article you reference, prostitution is legal in almost all western european countries and in several others around the world: Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Costa Rica, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey.
most of these countries regulate it in some way, and brothels and/or pimping might be illegal. but prostitution itself is quite legal in these countries (in Japan, intercourse-for-money is illegal, but providing oral sex for money is legal).
37. jfrater - October 18th, 2007 at 8:08 am
johnny: I have modified the text - thanks.
38. Juggz - October 18th, 2007 at 8:56 am
Jaw comment 18: It is not legal in Las Vegas. Vegas is in clark county which is the only county in Nevada where prostitution is in fact illegal.
39. tekno - October 18th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Horrible list. This is the worst one yet. I am seriously surprised this made the cut.
40. jfrater - October 18th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
tekno: hey! I thought they were all very interesting questions - particularly useful for anyone looking for a prostitute, porn star, or mail order bride
41. Tom - October 18th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Nicotine has a half life of two hours.Its gone within a day.Whoever wrote the smoking-coma answer is someone who just makes stuff up and shouldn’t be used as a source for anything.
42. jimbo - October 18th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Damn Right! I love my Thai hooker wife
43. Mathilda - October 18th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Amanda - Thanks a lot. I’m trying to quit smoking and right now I’m wondering what the point is. Are you saying that I’m never going to be happy again without a cigarette?!
I wonder if I drink enough so that I lose consciousness for a week if that would help?
44. ben - October 18th, 2007 at 8:40 pm
kinda a weird one here but, how do blind people know when they’re done wiping? thats always haunted me
45. jfrater - October 18th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
Tom - do you have a reference for that? I would love to see it.
46. Diogenes - October 19th, 2007 at 4:53 am
To you, Mathilda: I believe I have quit smoking after doing so for 15 years and I believe it now to be a final resolution, and I have had different attempts at quitting in the past years … yes, It is a joke , I suppose, when a smoker “quits” while smoking and is saying how they have quit before, all while puffing on a cigarette. But for me it has come down to death creeping in (actually, its more symbolically, a jazzy jiggy with a heavy foot steppin down on the turn around) . Being more aware through life and my time aboard, that this body is affected and is showing wear and tear, I came to the other end of the inevitable.
For me, having that inward voice was the main controller. The way I see it is that if you want to stop smoking, keep the thought to yourself (the actual instigation moment) and hold onto the reality of your life , in connection to why it is, that the path must lend itself to a new coarse of action.
slam the hammer down. for me it was an extreme diet, in which I stuck to a regimine: in the process my addictive mind wasnt thinking of the particullar vices, I wished to escape,as a means of nessesity
but still, I have to say that .
Every now and then I still crave a smoke during stressful times or after a good meal or when out drinking, But I tell myself the quitting is final and dont give in and buy a pack , and be on top of things, if you decide to smoke a friend’s cigerette.
I feel much more healthy and my mornings are clearer and I’m not sluggish anymore. I actually took note in a journal of the “voices” during the first couple of weeks when I started my stopping of most food, cigarettes and alchohol. you will quickly realize at what times you wish for a cigarette. That helped me a lot. Now I need to lower other vises in my life and counter balance them whith certain actions that I find that are “me”.
I dont know, this isn’t all written in the best way… but there it is.
47. Che - October 19th, 2007 at 7:27 am
If an unstoppable force hit an immobile object, what would happen ?
And twisting round and landing on its feet is NOT an acceptable answer.
*Update*
“42″ doesn’t work either…
Tried “42″, doesn’t work
48. Che - October 19th, 2007 at 7:31 am
Oh i get it - spam filter doesn’t like asterisks.
Maybe.
49. Che - October 19th, 2007 at 7:35 am
Anyway, what does happen when an unstoppable force meets an immobile object ?
50. Che - October 19th, 2007 at 7:37 am
The unstoppable force stops, and the immobile object moves.
51. Maal - October 19th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
actually, male porn stars performing male-on-male scenes make around $5000 per scene, whereas female porn stars performing same-sex scenes only make $500-1000. this was covered on HBO’s sex in the valley documentary.
52. Mathilda - October 19th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Thanks for the advice, Diogenes. You have much more will-power than me; I’m giving myself permission to do whatever I want for a month as long as I don’t smoke! (Except I can’t really drink - I’m tempted too much then.)
Wasn’t it in Valley of the Dolls where women were being put into comas so that they’d lose weight? Or am I getting stories mixed up? Just think, I could go to sleep and wake up a rail-thin non-smoking glamour queen. Of course, I’d have to give up a month or so of my life…. on second thought I think I’ll do it all the old-fashioned way!
53. Diogenes - October 19th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Right back at yah Mathilda: I dont know how much my will power compares to anybody else in the normal sence really. I think I may have just found myself in the right place at the right time and everything happened and finally “dominoed” its way, from a continued build up.
That sort of thing I have tried to pick up on over the years and what I said in the before comment holds true. , but with quitting smoking, I dont put it past me to have a “big fall” , right back in the muck. If its happened before it can happen again. I think the change of mind and strength comes with a vague awareness of reaccuring patterns within myself. I dont know. I gave myself “one more time and this is IT!” so many times.
It just so happened that I was in a coma for 15 years, and during that time I smoked continiously, pack after pack after pack. Then suddenly I awoke and wondered what the coagulated cough was all about.
Naw, not for real. Bad joke.
Maybe some independent inventor will come up with the “safe cigarette”. But that sounds to me like the Hitchcock episode(?) about the guy who came up with a motor that ran on water.
Actually, your “to do whatever I want for a month as long as I don’t smoke” sounds like an intriguing take on the topic at hand, but I wouldn’t advise it.
54. StraightToVideo - October 20th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
“Toast only has mythical power to land butter side down.”
Haha, I love that,
It makes it sound like toast has some crazy magical powers..
55. Terri - October 20th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
Wouldn’t you just explode in space because of the lack of pressure?
56. katie - October 21st, 2007 at 6:38 am
Quite interesting list ^^ enjoyed a lot.
57. jfrater - October 21st, 2007 at 7:06 am
StraightToVideo: thanks
Terri: no - but your blood would eventually begin to seep out of your pores.
Katie: Thanks
I am glad you liked it.
58. Punjar - October 21st, 2007 at 9:37 pm
If you tied buttered toast to the back of a cat and dropped it, it would cause a hole to tear open in space and destroy all matter in the universe. (I know because I’ve tried it)
59. Tony Z - October 31st, 2007 at 7:25 pm
I thought space was a vacuum. if you took off your helmet, wouldn’t your head and brain just ex/implode?
Or at least that’s what I thought
60. Ink - November 2nd, 2007 at 5:45 am
Actually the toast normally lands on the butterside.
The reason, when the toast is pushed from the table it only manages to turn 180 degrees before landing. This is beacause of the avarage table height.(To get rid of the problem just eat on the floor, or buy a table twice as high!)
61. evan - November 2nd, 2007 at 5:56 am
ahh mythbusters, good show
62. rich scales - November 3rd, 2007 at 11:40 pm
actually, if you have no suit on, if you go out of an airlock in space you would explode
the pressure inside your body is “even” on earth and pressure from the atmosphere levels it out through evolution
theres no pressure in space
so you would never find out how long it would take
63. Drogo - November 4th, 2007 at 3:50 am
I’m going to go strap my cats Angel and Smokey together then drop them from the roof. If there’s no Earth destroying rip in the Time/Space Continuum I’ll report back.
64. SuaveBugger - January 8th, 2008 at 4:53 am
… Drogo? I’m only just reading this now and I’m concerned that we haven’t heard from you, Angel and Smokey?
65. littleboots - January 15th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
perhaps the buttered side is just heavier, explaining why it lands buttered side down, seems simple enough to me…
66. Polly Odyssey - January 31st, 2008 at 6:10 pm
The Buttered cat paradox is funny. I even found a picture explaining the theory.
67. Bananas - February 3rd, 2008 at 10:08 am
i tied toast to my cat and ” accidentally” pushed him of the table. He didnt turn around and landed flat on his back so dont try it at home kids.
68. devilishgrin66 - February 15th, 2008 at 3:55 am
“what holds US patent #1?”
“Why do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?”
“Why does the blood rush to our head when we are upside down, but not to our feet when we are rightside up?”
“is committing suicide an actual crime?”
“who is the earliest documented case of AID’s?”
69. Koryu_Ninja - February 19th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Actually, the Mythbusters tested whether toast lands butterside down or up, and they dropped a bunch of pieces of toast and it was almost half and half. So it really just seems like it always lands butter-side down because those are the times you remember it better. I do find it weird how people remember negative experiences more often than positive experiences.
70. Ghidoran - March 2nd, 2008 at 6:31 pm
For number 3, it’s actually 7.6.
71. Oso - March 17th, 2008 at 8:15 am
I always wanted to know how much porn stars make hahaha
72. goatmissile - June 18th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
I think the question is if you tied a cheese and bacon flan to a cat, would this skew the data? I mean, the addititoanl mass of the flan, vis a vis the usual buttered toast schema, would slow the rotation of the cat, perhaps ensuring a most bewildering cat on side impact scenario. Of course the cat would quickly forget the horrifying trauma of the collision, by scarfing the flan. Damn that sounds good. Atherosclerosis be damned!
73. Vera Lynn - June 20th, 2008 at 9:05 am
Devilishgrin Your blood does rush to your feet. Astronauts actually get terrific headaches in zero gravity because of swollen vessels.
I thought this was a funny list. How do I get to be a mail-order bride? Teasin’!