Trolls, toothpaste and the meaning of life

More answers to your questions from the only blog that is under the impression that it can talk authoritatively about pretty much everything in the universe. OK, not the only one. 

How do they put the stripes in toothpaste?

The stripes occur naturally in toothpaste in much the same way that geological strata are formed. Essentially the immense pressure inside a squeezed tube of toothpaste generates colossal heat and this causes some of the toothpaste to change its molecular composition. This results in stripes, or to use the correct term, “seams” running through the toothpaste.  The process happens in all toothpaste but is really only noticeable when it causes the distinctive red colouring.  The phenomenon can be observed naturally in the Great Toothpaste Shales of Saskatchewan, revered by the Inuit as “Sig Naltu”, or “Great Striped Giver of Minty Confidence”  

Is Islington fair?

It all depends on what you mean by Islington. Does the question refer to a) the London Borough of Islington? Or to b) the well-known card game where player one is dealt four cards face down and the remaining cards are placed in a pile face up in “the pool”. Player two then shouts “Islington” and punches player one in the face and takes their shoes. If a) I’d say more strawberry blond. If b) it depends on what you mean by “punches player one in the face and takes their shoes.”

Is life meaningless?

Not in everyday usage, but if you say it over and over again life will eventually become meaningless. This is also true of spoon, polo-pony and lartipond. Curiously, the reverse is true of cumberkew.

Why do trolls spend so much time hanging around bridges? Why are they so grumpy?

When bridges first became popular in Olden Times there was no obvious way for bridge builders to recoup their investment and so trolls were employed to shout “Who’s that walking over my bridge” in a frightening manner at travellers and then collect a small fee. The system worked well and these Troll Bridges became common,   and over time the trolls made comfortable homes for themselves under the arches or even built small dwellings for themselves known as Troll Booths. However, frequent bridge users came to resent the trolls for their slap-dash customer service skills and in the end a health and safety incident involving some unsupervised billygoats was seized on by critics who demanded the trolls be properly trained. Sadly the trolls struggled with the phrase “We recognise you have a choice of bridges, thank you for choosing this one!” and their attempts to fill in a Risk Assessment form describing measures to minimise goat attack were laughable. Soon the trolls became resentful and shunned human contact, until their effectiveness as revenue collectors was hopelessly compromised and the system was abandoned.

Where are my glasses?

There. On the chest of drawers…. No, under the magazine. Under the…. Well they were there earlier…. I’m TRYING to help….  No, I didn’t put them in the chair…. Well clearly if I’d known they were there I wouldn’t have sat on them…. Are they? Good. They made you look like a mental owl.

So it's probably best to leave it there. Do keep the questions coming and be more tolerant of trolls where appropriate.

Crows, plum sauce and the moon

More answers to your questions about every why, how, what, whence, wheretofore and whithersoever in the Universe.

When will all grocery stores agree on where, generally, to put the plum sauce?

In 1891 Huey L Dewey, younger brother of Melvil Dewey (of the Dewey Decimal System) devised his revolutionary method for supermarket product arranging, and all the major chains still follow this system. Under Dewey’s system fruit and vegetables go near the door so you can carry them as far as possible squashed under other things, cereals go next to the biscuits, and small chocolate things and magazines you don’t recognize the name of go next to the till. Hence foods from Asia go together, except for rice which goes with pasta, and lentils which go with health food, and organic things from Asia that nevertheless aren’t healthy which go with other organic things, unless they could be used in a barbecue, when they go in Seasonal Goods, or are yellow and/or begin with “p” in which case they go in the baking aisle. You’ll by now see a pattern emerging, and I hope it will be obvious that plum sauce in any supermarket operating under the Dewey system would be equidistant between fruit, pet supplies and treacle.

Where do we go from here?

Way over there, right at the end where it’s quiet. But you’ll have to carry all the towels and the picnic and the inflatables because I’ve got the beach umbrella.

Why is the moon wrong? (it often comes out in the early evening)

The moon isn’t ever wrong, but it is sometimes quite sarcastic. On a bright clear day when you look up and see the faint outline of the moon it is effectively saying “Oh, yeah, ‘cos day is just like so brilliant.” And then if it had hands it would do that sign that means "Whatevers."

Why do birds suddenly appear?

The technique for making birds suddenly appear was devised by Alfred Hitchcock who needed a way to make a large number of spooky birds appear en masse on a perch in the time it took to cut away to a frightened lady.  In the end he devised the following method: a large number of crows had lengths of elastic tied to their feet, then the other end was tied to a school climbing frame or similar. The crows were then tempted to roost there by being shown a short film about shiny keys and road-kill squirrels.  Then when Hitchock wanted to go for a take he would shout “Boo”. The crows would then fly away allowing him a couple of seconds to film the empty perch and then the scared lady (still alarmed by the director’s “boo”). By now the crows would have reached the zenith of their elasticity and been twanged suddenly back on to the branch in time to appear on camera looking extremely cross.

How many constellations aren’t there?

I’m afraid the answer to this is none. They all are.

Hopefully that’s liquidized at least some of the great challenges facing those who thirst after knowledge. It's possible that there might still be a bit of the Universe that remains unexplained, so do keep the questions coming.

Al Capone and the Ministry of Drab Awfulness.

Welcome, dear readers to another scramble through the unmapped cave system of knowledge. I’ve got a torch, a fistful of your questions, and a poorly thought-through metaphor, so it should be fun. Let’s go.

Who would win in a fight between a polar bear, a velociraptor, and Al Capone?

This is an age old conundrum. Aristotle was convinced that the fight would start slowly, with the velociraptor ducking and weaving and occasionally flicking the bear with his tail, and the bear growing increasingly frustrated and trying to lash out while Al Capone ran a book on the whole gruesome proceedings having already “suggested” to the velociraptor that he was going down in the fourth. Marx believed that over the course of the fight the veociraptor and bear would achieve “class consciousness” and overthrow Al Capone and possibly nationalize him, rendering him loss making. In the end history tells us the winner was the polar bear after the velociraptor was successfully prosecuted for income tax evasion and Al Capone was killed by an asteroid.

Is the right answer to this question “no”?

This demonstrates the superiority of the human intellect over evil computers in science fiction stories. Faced with this paradox an evil computer will tend to flash all its lights and say “Does not compute” in its special evil voice before self-destructing, whereas a person will think about it intensely for around three minutes and then get distracted by cats that look like Hitler on YouTube. Cuh. Look at him, with his silly moustache. Bless.

Orange juice and grape juice and apple juice are mere juices, but cranberry juice is a cocktail. Yet it has no alcohol! Please explain.

Cranberry juice is a metaphorical cocktail, such as we often hear of on the news, and rarely in a good way, for example “a cocktail of barbiturates”; “a cocktail of flammable liquids”; or “a cocktail of lethal cocktails”.  It is only a matter of time before we hear “Generic Celebrity found dead following a Massive Cocktail of Cranberries.”

What will be the last question?

Can anyone else smell maximum entropy?

Why do we drive on the left?

For a long time people drove according to regional custom so for example in Devizes locals avoided accidents by driving downhill in the mornings and getting drunk in the afternoon. All that changed in World War II, when driving was standardized by the Ministry of Drab Awfulness. Various systems were tried, including everyone driving on the North; and cars on the bottom, tanks on the top, until the present system was selected by Paul McCartney, a young civil servant who went on to a very different post-war career. Since the war many have argued for a return to the old ways but apparently we can’t change back now because of something to do with farmers not wanting to get up in the dark.

Thanks for all your questions. Do keep them coming. Then once we’ve covered every possible facet of this universe we can squeeze in explanations of all the other infinite parallel universes, one by one, which is bound to come in handy.

Hats, Quinces, Margaret Atwood and Custard.

A collection of facts is not knowledge any more than a collection of stones is a cathedral. Here then in answer to your questions about the mysteries of the universe are; a curvy bit from a Gothic window, two limestone blocks, a bit of a pillar, a roof-tile and a kidney stone from a bishop.  The rest is up to you.

How many people annually eat their shoes? Is it more than eat their hats?

Here are the results from the Bayerische Schuh-und-Hut Fressenfest for the last four years. 2007 – Shoes 513, Hats 457; 2008 – Shoes 453, Hats 617; 2009 - Shoes 0, Hats 1; 2010 Shoes 913, Hats 0, Towels 1. To explain a couple of surprising things in these statistics – 2009 saw a venue change from Bayern in Southern Germany to the island fortress of Iwo Jima in the Pacific. The organiser, Klaus Wurstwerfer confidently asserted that if this affected attendance he would eat his hat.  In 2010 the competition ended in disarray: as everybody knows the Fressenfest traditionally begins with a hat being thrown into the ring, after which the opposition put the boot in, and so on, but in 2010 a misunderstanding with the laundry lead to the hat-eaters mistakenly throwing in the towel thus technically ruling themselves out.

How can I tell left from right, and remember which is which?

There’s a simple rhyme for this –

Left is on the left hand side

Right is on the right

All the rest have thirty-one

Divorced beheaded survived.

Why does only the left side of my body make clicking noises?

There are all kinds of explanations for clicking and it’s hard to know without more information: for example if you are have an oak skeleton then it’s possible you have death-watch beetle; if you are a ten year old child with a retractable biro in your left hand you may be trying to get on your dad’s nerves when he’s trying to read the paper; or possibly the whole left side of your body may be the opening number from West Side Story.  The good news is that somewhere out there is someone who makes clicking noises only down the right side of their body, and I have a feeling if you two get together you’ll totally click.

My daughter has drawn a picture that she says is The Leaning Tower of Treason. Where is that and why is it so called?

The Leaning Tower of Treason is in the picturesque market town of Treason, Wiltshire. It was designed to exactly resemble the Leaning Tower of Pisa by local architect Henry Leaning, and when it was first completed it was known as the Leaning Leaning Tower of Pisa of Treason, but it was built on the wrong kind of swamp and over the years it became gradually vertical, until the second “leaning” was dropped from the name. In the 1970s the tower was covered in brick-effect cladding and unsympathetically double glazed so the resemblance to Pisa diminished and it was simply called The Leaning Tower of Treason.  Then in the 80s it was shortened to one storey and turned into a branch of Tower Records.

What has become of the great British Quince?

Feeling sidelined by sharp-suited kiwi fruits, young urban papayas with their I-pods, and street-smart mangos with their Blackberries the old-fashioned quince has dropped out of the fruit race and has been spending the last few years happily hanging about in mossy country gardens with its friends the mulberry and the damson, and occasionally getting deliciously jellied at a local cheese board.  It says it’s never been happier but does go on a bit about that time it was in The Owl and the Pussycat.

Are fortune cookies wiser than other biscuits?

No. Compared to most biscuits fortune cookies are idiots.  The wisest biscuits are Chocolate Kierkegaards, but unfortunately they have a leathery taste as they are made out of leather. The Custard Russell is also thought of as an intelligent biscuit, but it is unavailable in shops as it’s an abstract concept. Margaret Atwood is very clever, but is not a biscuit at all.

I hope that’s cleared up some of the mysteries of the universe. However do remember that here at Some Kind of Explanation the mission is to have ALL of the mysteries of the universe explained before time itself shall cease, so do keep the questions coming in.

The smell of success and the socks of despair.

More from the blog that aims to answer every possible question in the universe as sent in by you, the readers. Although if you aren’t reading this then sorry to have been presumptuous.

Why did humans decide on business cards?

In these days of carpets and clothing it’s not practical for humans to introduce themselves by scent-marking or bottom-sniffing. Besides we just don’t have the right glands, and our sense of smell is too unsophisticated to make the nuanced distinctions in odour needed to arrange a pack or society. So people have had to fall back on the next most obvious solution, using small pieces of cardboard to make subtle judgements about each-other's status on the basis of things like choice of font.

Did history correctly answer the Schleswig-Holstein Question?

No. In the examination history ran out of time, panicked and answered A to all of the remaining seventeen questions, one of which was the Schleswig-Holstein question. So the fundamental problem is that history never actually read the Schleswig-Holstein question, the actual answer to which was C.

Blu-Tac or drawing pins?

Drawing pins for red meat, Blu-tac for fish and chicken. With game you can use either but I recommend Sellotape.

What about those bloody immigrants eh?

A frighteningly-phrased question from this reader, but immigration has always been a massive problem as far as the British are concerned. Take the Indians. Boat-loads of British people immigrated into India and killed lots of them. Then they took over loads of things and didn’t even open any decent restaurants.  On the other hand there have also been problems with immigration into Britain. The worst example that we know of was the Normans, who came over here taking our jobs and harrowing our North. Possibly the Angles and Saxons were worse but we don’t know because they killed all the Romano-Celtic scribes so nobody knew how to write down the subsequent outrages. Maybe this is a good argument for having a basic literacy element in the citizenship test. Fundamentally, some people have been coming over here/going over there and stealing our/their jobs/culture/mammoths for some time and I suspect it may now be too late to get everyone to go back to where they all came from (i.e. The Rift Valley).

Where do all the socks go once they enter the washing machine?

The washing machine doesn’t destroy socks, but it does literally turn their world up side down, and round about half way through the spin cycle many of them begin to yearn for a better life. Some of the socks go on to further education, or travel, others may pen a semi-autobiographical rite-of-passage novel. These last ones encounter a lot of rejection from publishers banging on about how it’s hard to sell anything these days that isn’t a “genre” and eventually become disillusioned. In the end they try a succession of low-paid tutoring jobs then go back to being socks, but kind of angry deep down, so they go at the heel.

If "nemo" is Latin for no one, who did the clown fish find?

The clown fish found only the endless sea of always-absent meaning that Jacques Derrida called Différance. Also a really funny but dumb blue fish called Dory.

So now hopefully the birthday-candle of knowledge flickers ever-so-slightly brighter in the malevolent catacombs of endless chaos.  Why not send in your own questions on any subject big or small, before the tiny flame gutters and all is infinite darkness?

Watching Telly with a Giant Lizard.

More answers to your questions on the things that really matter in the universe.

Who's gonna clean up this mess?

After many centuries of trial and error society has arranged this as follows - if the person that made the mess is under thirty years old it will be the job of their parents to clean it up (eg. all that Plasticine in the carpet or chronic unemployability), whereas if the person who made the mess is over thirty it will be the job of their children to clear it up (eg senility or Global Warming).

Why haven't I won the lottery?

I’m sorry to say that this is your own fault. Like everybody, you have already won several major cash prizes and probably a bucketful of I-pods too. Like everybody you will have had letters and pop-ups and phone calls from Spanish robots telling you about it. But you haven’t shown ANY interest. You haven’t even replied. Automated junk mail distributors are people too, and inevitably you’ve hurt their feelings, and word has got round in the wider cash-prize-distributing community that you simply can’t be bothered. You may say that buying a lottery ticket is proof of a genuine interest in winning the lottery, but people often buy things not because they hope to use them but because they feel they ought to, otherwise why would we have dental floss?

If someone is "out of your league" does that mean football or cricket?

Neither. It’s a reference to the Hanseatic trading league of Baltic city states from the 13^th to 17^th Century. This is good news for romantics because it means you can entice someone you find attractive into your league by offering them lucrative trade in furs, rye and resin. If that doesn’t work then a punitive military expedition to set fire to their navy could force them into some kind of treaty arrangement leading to nights out, country walks and maybe more.

When should you swap your camel?

This kind of insensitive question makes me very angry. Camels are not some commodity to be swapped and bartered at the nearest oasis like so many carpets, basket of dates, or daughters.

What is Bad Science?

“Bad” Science describes science midway between “Evil” Science and “Perfectly Fine” Science under the Wissenshaftsmoralität Klassifizierung, which was the old system for measuring mad scientists before that all went metric and we had to start talking about Boffins and Kilo-boffins (thank you Brussels). Under the old system, a mad scientist who created a giant lizard to destroy New York would be an Evil Scientist whereas a mad scientist who created a giant lizard to watch repeats of Have I Got News For You? on the Dave Channel would be a Perfectly Fine Scientist. A Bad Scientist would typically create a Giant Lizard that would tag park benches, play its music too loud on the bus and end up with an ASBO.

Is it time yet?

It is time yet, and has been since the beginning of time. The more worrying issue is that at some point it won’t be time anymore, but until that happens we’ve still got time.

So hopefully that’s cleared a few things up, but if anything is still bothering you within the great sphere of all creation, then ask away.

Vince Cable and the Kaiser's poorly zebra

More answers to your questions on the subject of everything in the universe.

Who owns the gang of horses currently roaming free in the otherwise quiet cul-de-sacs of Ashford, Kent?

The Kaiser does. In 1860 Queen Victoria conferred on her infant grandson Wilhelm the title of Procurator-Royal of the Kentish Horse, which gave him a theoretical right of requisition over all hoofed mammals of the four ancient towns of Sandwich, Margate, Rochester and Ashford. At the outbreak of hostilities in 1914 the Kaiser duly put his claim to the 413 horses, 8 donkeys and a poorly zebra in writing to George V, but George in a bid to avoid having to snub his cousin pretended to be out, and continued to do so for the next four years. The Treaty of Versailles expressly demanded that the Kaiser withdraw his claims on the animals, but in the treaty Ashford was mistakenly recorded as Ashtead. Thus the claim was never legally rescinded, and the horses of Ashford are still technically at the disposal of the Kaiser.

When is Jeremy Paxman?

By day mild-mannered Jeremy works as assistant manager for an artisanal cheese-makers’ co-operative near Stroud. But should democracy be in danger, or students need to be snorted at derisively while trying to answer questions about Keats and the formation of Triphosphorous Heptachloride, then the BBC puts out a special coded signal. Only then does Jeremy become Paxman. The rest of the time he keeps his special sneering suit in the cold-store, and he has a secret Paxphone shaped like a truckle of Double Gloucester.

Why did God invent moths?

God loves all forms of holiness, and this even extends to homonyms. It’s that kind of thoroughness that got God where he is today, ie everywhere.

If it is true that many surnames originated as a result of one’s occupation what is the history of Vince Cable’s family?

Certainly some surnames have their origins in the occupations of our ancestors, hence names like Tim Smith, Daisy Mugger and Saffron Loss-Adjuster. Other names find their origins in personal traits: Dennis Brown, Liam Ottersmell and Samantha Horrible. And a third category of names denote the places our ancestors came from: The Outlaw Josie Wales; Olwen Chatanooga; and Xarglfax  Horsehead-Nebula. Vince Cable does indeed fall into that first category, having had an ancestor who was three thousand miles tall who spent some time submerged under the Atlantic passing on messages, then went on to have a successful career designing and knitting jumpers.

And following on from that, what are the origins of the surname Battery?

Most likely this refers to an ancestor who was a clumsy apprentice in a pancake factory.

Do keep the questions rolling in or we’ll never get the universe comprehensively explained before time itself shall cease, and so we won’t know whether any of it mattered or not, which would be a shame.