A Few questions that have plaqued my mind!!?

Question

1) Why is a dog's nose always wet???
2) Why is a computer mouse called a 'mouse'???
3) Why does Apple Corporation put the letter 'i' in front of everything???
4) Did you think Borat was funny?? :)
5) Why do we count minutes and hours in '60s'?? Why not 100s??

FFS another one popped into my head

6) Why are planets and stars round?? Why do we not see square planets or triangular planets??

Soz I just cannot help it

Answer 1

EDIT:
6 - Why planets and stars are round...

If a planet was like a cube, the corners of the cube would be higher than the rest of the planet. Since planets and stars are so big, you cannot build a "foundation" strong enough to hold up those corners! Anything you built it out of would be too weak to hold them up. Gravity would eventually pull them down.

Even solid rock will flow like a liquid, although very slowly, if it is pulled by a very strong gravitational force for a very long time. Corners on a cubical planet or star would eventually just squish down.

Since gravity pulls toward the center of the planet or star, everything gets pulled down into a sphere. However, planets and stars are not really perfect spheres. They spin, so they bulge out a little around the equator.




1 - A dog's nose isn't always wet..sometimes it's dry. It's mostly wet when it's happy and licking it.

2 - A mouse is called a mouse, because when they first came out the cord was attached to the rear part of it, suggesting a form of tail. Stanford Research Institute coined the phrase.

3 - When you see the "i" in front of the product, one automatically assumes it's from Apple. That's what they want. It's like free advertising for them.

4 - Borat - sooo not funny..sooo not.

5 - Good question...had to search the web for this. Here's what I found..

This all dates back to the Ancient Babylonians who liked to count in base 60. Ratios of 6, 12, 60, and 360 were seen by them as being 'round' numbers in the same way that we use base 10 and see 5, 10, 100 etc as useful numbers to divide things up into.

The Babylonians divided the sky into the 12 signs of the Zodiac, and a circle into 360 degrees. They divided the day and night each into 12 hours. The hour was split into 60 minutes and a minute into 60 seconds.

Answer 2

Alright man, here we go.
1-a dog's nose must be wet for the amount of olfactory(smell) sensors in the tissue to work appropriately. Our noses aren't wet because we have much less olfactory sensors and they are all located only inside our noses.
2-a computer mouse looks like a mouse with the fat little body and the long tail.
3-It is a marketing scheme. The "i" stands for internet, but recently it has evolved to intelligent. That's why those new commercials have the common sense "intelligent" guy and the dumb ole PC guy. They just want to sound sophisticated.
4-I thought borat had it's moments. The whole notion of making people believe something false has been played out by shows like Tom Green and Jackass I think.
5-Long ago, the Babylonians had a base counting system of 60. It was by convention that early scientist decided on 1/86,400th of an earth revolution on its axis relative to the sun should be a second. It sounds funny, but I believe they also looked at general dripping of water and what time frame each drip occurred in should be a second. Those early scientist had some screwed up notions, but we do live better lives because of them.
Keep asking questions. Einstein said,"Imagination is more important than knowledge".
6.celestial bodies are round because there is a gravitational force pulling at an infinite number if sides inward. Over billions and billions of years, no matter what shape a large enough body is, it will eventually "mold" itself so there is equal pressure in, and out, on all side of the sphere.

Answer 3

1) The canine nose is normally cool and moist, but not wet. It has no sweat glands; the moisture is caused by the mucus lining

2) By staff in IBM i think as it resembled a mouse with the wire as the tail

3) More research needed

4) For about ten minuets at a time, any more than that and no it was not. Almost embarrassing at times

5) The importance of 60 comes from the Babylonians used a base 60 number system as compared to our base 10 system. 60 and 6x60 = 360 were very natural numbers for them to work with. They used a 360 (6X60) day calendar as opposed to our 365 day calendar. The ancient astronomers would have noticed that it takes 365 days for the sun to move (about our fixed Earth) past the stars that appeared to be fixed to an external heavenly sphere, and return to where they started. The choice of 360 days for a year may have been a compromise between a 365 day solar year and a 354 day lunar year, (consisting of 12 months of 29.5 days each

Answer 4

1) It isn't. When it is runny though they don't really wipe it.
2) It kind of resembles a mouse with the cord being the tail.
3) iMac was designed to be an "I"nternet ready and easy to use computer. the letter i now represents the simple easy products while power was used up until recently for more complicated powerful machines.
4) Mostly no. Didn't see what the big deal about it was.
5) I've always wondered that myself. With the english units becoming obsolete almost worldwide to the power of 10 based metric system it is a wonder that time is still using odd numbers.

Answer 5

1) cause it can be
2) The name "Hand held cursor manipulation device doohicky" was too much printing for the package [Seriously, no idea.]
3) Ask Jobbs or Wozniak [sorry if I have misspelled your names guys]
4) Never saw it and previews I saw didn't look interesting.
5) Something to do with reason why there are 360 degrees in a circle instead of 100 too.
6) The sphere is the most efficient shape for any given volume of mass to form into. Plus, all planets formed from bunches of matter that coalesced. The pieces did not move towards each other from perfectly opposite directions. They moved near each other, got attracted to each other by gravity, started orbiting each other and ended up colliding and continuing their spinning.

Answer 6

1) I think it helps them to identify smells better. In a doggie world i think a wet nose works better than a dry one.
2) It's looks abit like a mouse. A computer geeks 'joke' i guess.
3) Don't know.
4) Not seen it.
5) Don't know.

Glad to have been of assistance.

Answer 7

1. According to:

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mdognose.html

For starters, dogs' noses aren't always wet. Sometimes they're dry, sometimes they're runny, sometimes they're scaly. Most of the time, though, a bright, happy dog will continually lick his nose (and you, the air, and his private parts; it's not like they're discriminating) and so the nose is wet. When the dog isn't feeling well, he tends not to lick his nose, and the nose is dry. This is not a direct correlation, however, and does not mean that dry noses equal fevers.

Another citation from http://www.pets.ca/articles/article-dog_wetnose.htm

Scientists have many answers for this. One is that evaporation or moisture from the nose helps cool the dog. Another is that added moisture in the nose makes the dog more sensitive to odors.The most boring answer is that many digs simply lick their noses with their tongues, thus wetting them. ------------> (He means the first site i suppose?)

2. According to this wikipedia article, the name derives from its appereance:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_mouse

The name mouse, coined at the Stanford Research Institute, derives from the resemblance of early models (which had a cord attached to the rear part of the device, suggesting the idea of a tail) to the common eponymous rodent.

3. i on apple products is said to indicate "internet", but i can not cite this one..

4. It was disgusting :P

5. http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/mar98/890662272.Sh.r.html

And a different approach here:

http://www.nmm.ac.uk/server/show/conWebDoc.17918

Hope this helps.. :)

Answer 8

I'll answer what I can... which is - 1) Because it's part of their internal cooling system & 4) No.

Wish I could answer more - and can't believe such an interesting question hasn't got a star yet!

Have one on me...

(I'll be checking back if for no other reason than to find out why a mouse is called a mouse!)

Answer 9

1. To stop dust getting into the throat
2. 'cos it can be a damn nuisance and has a big tail ( the cable)
3. Don't know
4. No!
5. Don't you start with more EU decimalisation I've has enough

Answer 10

1. Because dog's cry and sniffle.
2. Because computer mouse's have long tails.
3. Because I don't know.
4. No
5. Time, didn't create it.