Tell Me Why...

[3278]

When I was a child, one of my favorite books was Tell Me Why?, a giant old hardback full of questions children ask that adults don't know the answer to. One can only assume this was a particular problem of mine, as a search of my childhood books a moment ago [looking for Tell Me Why? which is worryingly absent] turned up several other such books, including Why Do Some Shoes Squeak? and How Do They Do That?, and several other books with question marks in the title, not to mention more reference works than any adult I know.

As an adult, one of my greatest joys is in taking the role of those books, sharing information I possess that others might not. I often characterize it as copying information from areas of greater density to areas of lesser density - information osmosis - except that this often makes people think I'm always the person teaching, and never the person learning, when nothing could be further from the truth! I get at least as much joy, still, out of learning as I do teaching.

My propensity for doing this - often at length, in the style of informative works, which is sometimes quite unpopular - is nearly infamous. From why coal tar didn't save Archibald Cochrane to how recording of images and sound works to immense digressions on soil fertility, I've spent some fair portion of the last decade sharing my often literally trivial information with other people, with varying degrees of acceptance.

That freespeech thread I linked to in the middle there was one of my favorites, ever, because it meant people asking questions they actually wanted answers to, not me volunteering information no one ever wanted to know. [Teredo Navalis? Really?] And lately, I've been catching more flak than usual for volunteering useless information at great length, which usually makes me feel like shit, and probably doesn't feel great for other people, either. So what better than another thread where people can have the same chance, not just to ask questions, but also to answer them, so I can learn and teach and not feel like the professor who just crapped datum in everyone's party bowl.

If there's something you'd like more information about - courtly love following the Crusades, the life cycle of the damselfly, how natural selection produces brotherly affection, whatever - and you'd like to have your question answered at length, and you don't mind reading it the way I like to write, please, ask away. If I don't know the answer - and, not to be a dick, but I probably do, thanks to all those childhood books, and the thousands I've read since - I'll do literally weeks of research to find the answer for you. Everything you ever wanted to know about whatever you ever wanted to know about, written by a guy you know, and where possible, supported by direct references, photographic examples - if I don't have to drive too far - whatever it takes to answer your question.

What would you like to know?

[Cash]

Ok...

We're made of many, many individual cells. How do they stick together to form a person? What keeps us from disintegrating to a pile of individual cells?

[Sam]

I would be really happy if you could explain the following:

Where did Space come from?

And how can you measure how dark a black hole is?

[AtemHutlrt]

Why didn't the dinosaurs eat Adam and Eve?

[DV8]

Ok...

We're made of many, many individual cells. How do they stick together to form a person? What keeps us from disintegrating to a pile of individual cells?

I would be really happy if you could explain the following:

Where did Space come from?

And how can you measure how dark a black hole is?

To the both of you, if you want to know, read this book, it's awesome, and explains it in detail!

[Eva]

Why does hot water sound different than cold when it comes out of the tap?

[3278]

Awesome selection of questions! Thanks so much. Let me get some clarification on a couple before I answer them wrong:

Where did Space come from?

You mean "space" as in "the vacuum between all the stars and whatnot" or as in "all of the everything in the universe?"

Why does hot water sound different than cold when it comes out of the tap?

There are a couple different methods of plumbing which produce a couple different sounds; so you mean a screeching sound coming from the pipes, or the hissing sound coming from the tap itself? If it's the latter, when you pour the hot water into a clear container, does it seem cloudier - as if it's filled with some white dust which quickly disappears, leaving nothing behind - than when you pour cold water into the same container?

[Sam]

I mean the whole lot. Where did the back bits in between rocks come from, and how did it get there. And for that matter where did the lumps of rock come from? Larger bits of rock? Is our definition of space the intergalatic equivilant of the bottom of a hangbag, crumbs and all? In which case, who is holding the handbag? Is our infinity actually the smallest Russian Universe Doll?

And if everything is flying away from the centre of some explosion, how did that explosion come to be? Who light the match?
And where is stuff flying too, and what does that stuff fly in?
And at what point will that stuff fly into the end of the available room to fly in? And then what happens? Will will end up all bunched up against some cosmic aquarium wall?

[Sam]

Also - How do you get computers to talk to one another? If my keyboard has a wire that goes into the back of the laptop, do all my letters squeeze into the wire? Ok it makes sense that they get reduced into little 0s and 1s, but then how does it unscramble?

And how does DOS work? How do you make a new laptop move from being an expensive paperweight to something that does internets?

Thanks for offering up a space to write down the crazy. My ex would only let me ask these type of questions (also known as Adiiiiin questions *note wheedling undertones*) after sex. On the upside this meant we had a lot of sex. Then he dumped me so these v important queries just end up floating around my head.

OH!! Also, how does thinking work? I can hear my voice in my head right now, but not in my ears. What's that all about?!

[Eva]

There are a couple different methods of plumbing which produce a couple different sounds; so you mean a screeching sound coming from the pipes, or the hissing sound coming from the tap itself? If it's the latter, when you pour the hot water into a clear container, does it seem cloudier - as if it's filled with some white dust which quickly disappears, leaving nothing behind - than when you pour cold water into the same container?

Yes, and that answers my question, which I now realise I asked before and someone else here (I want to say it was Marius, but then, I just like saying his name) already answered.

[Eva]

Why do cookies get stale or soggy when you add a different kind of cookies to the same jar?

[Sam]

Why do babies get the squits when they are teething?

[Bishop]

What's a squit?

[WillyGilligan]

Why do babies get the squits when they are teething?

I know I've heard this one over the years, but I forget. I'm gonna go with either:

A: increase in drool being swallowed.

or

B: Stress causing change in digestion

[Serious Paul]

Is there a way to connect a cell phone to a Fax machine?

[Sam]

And another:

The main ingredient in bread (bred if you are Megan) and biscuits is flour. So, when left in a non airtight container, why does bread go hard but biscuits go soggy?

[Crazy Elf]

Well? Where are the answers!?

[DV8]

I'm guessing 32 only has so much time to do the proper amount of research to answer the questions posted here. Give the dude a break. I think this is probably the most prestigious thread he's ever started.

[Serious Paul]

It's also summer time, so between relaxing and enjoying the nice weather-and Michigan's natural wonders, helping me out, gaming, and etc...Well you can imagine how busy we all get.

[AtemHutlrt]

It's also summer time, so between relaxing and enjoying the nice weather-and Michigan's natural wonders, helping me out, gaming, and etc...

Yeah, but 32 doesn't do any of that. How could he? He's just a disembodied brain I keep in a fish tank in my basement. He's not been functioning at 100% lately because last weekend I got bombed on Jim Beam, and peed in the tank. I think it fried his data jack, or gave him a disease or something.

[Liniah]

And another:

The main ingredient in bread (bred if you are Megan) and biscuits is flour. So, when left in a non airtight container, why does bread go hard but biscuits go soggy?

Hahahaha, I got quite a chuckle out of that. My spelling is so infamous that I get called out when I'm not even in the thread! (I'm fairly certain that I would've gotten bread right, though.)

[DV8]

No, unfortunately you didn't. I remember the "bred" incident, though I can't quite remember where you posted it.

[Eva]

I still use 'board' for 'bored', another Meganism.

[Sam]

And cauf. Brilliant stuff.

[Liniah]

No, no, it was cough vs caugh. I get the 'gh', sheesh.

[Serious Paul]

Yeah, but 32 doesn't do any of that. How could he? He's just a disembodied brain I keep in a fish tank in my basement. He's not been functioning at 100% lately because last weekend I got bombed on Jim Beam, and peed in the tank. I think it fried his data jack, or gave him a disease or something.

Oh that was what you meant by "I got five on it"...

[3278]

Dennis is absolutely correct. I was absolutely stumped by the first question. Serious points to Cash: I've never once even considered how cells adhere to each other, and this has sent me on a great chase for the answer. Thanks, buddy! I'll stop reading and start typing this week, I promise.

[DV8]

Honestly, read the book that I refered to. Atoms stick together through gravity!

[Sam]

I love that although URL is only a nanosecond older than me, he has managed to take on the mantle of benevolent uncle or mayhaps a learned Father Christmas, if you will.

[3278]

Atoms stick together through gravity!

You're not serious, right?

[DV8]

Atoms stick together through gravity!

You're not serious, right?

My knowledge of physics is pretty weak compared to yours. I had read, recently, that atoms stick together because of inter-molecular attraction, and I wrongly assumed it was due to the mass. I just reread the bit I read recently, and it's because of their charge, rather than their mass, which makes sense because it explains what happens when you heat them up or cool them down. (E.g. vaporise and solidify, etc.)

[Cash]

Cells, son. Cells. Atoms stick together with an entirely different process.

3278: Maybe this will help: Cells apparently "stick" together because of a protein. One of the street magicians/illusionists (forget which one) did a stunt where he was suspended in a clear container of water over a street in London for a length of time (weeks or months...I forget). One of the things I remember hearing was that if a human spends a long amount of time in water (think days upon days upon days), the protein holding the cells together will dissolve.

But that's all I know about it. I was going to ask Jestyr when we were together (geneticist/biologist by schooling), but it kept slipping from my mind.

[Crazy Elf]

I've never once even considered how cells adhere to each other

These days it's usually due to funding from the North-Western tribal regions in Pakistan.

[Marius]

I've never once even considered how cells adhere to each other, and this has sent me on a great chase for the answer. Thanks, buddy! I'll stop reading and start typing this week, I promise.

Oh dear, this is so very complicated. It varies greatly based on tissue type, but the very general answer is that most of the structural cell lines - i.e., squamous cells in the skin, fibroblasts in most other connective tissues, osteoblasts in bone - lay down an extracelleular matrix of protenaceous stuff that provides adhesion and structure.

[Cash]

I've never once even considered how cells adhere to each other, and this has sent me on a great chase for the answer. Thanks, buddy! I'll stop reading and start typing this week, I promise.

Oh dear, this is so very complicated. It varies greatly based on tissue type, but the very general answer is that most of the structural cell lines - i.e., squamous cells in the skin, fibroblasts in most other connective tissues, osteoblasts in bone - lay down an extracelleular matrix of protenaceous stuff that provides adhesion and structure.

Err, in "it's 100am and I should be taking a nap on my lunch break instead of surfing Bulldrek speak" please.

[Cash]

Why does an unopened can of Diet Pepsi float in water and an unopened can of Pepsi sinks?

[WillyGilligan]

I've never once even considered how cells adhere to each other

These days it's usually due to funding from the North-Western tribal regions in Pakistan.

I loled.

[Tiny Deev]

Why do men, statictically, more often commit suicide by hanging or with a gun and woman slice their wrists and use pills?

How does it feel to be mentally ill. I mean, serious mental illness. Depersonalization disorder or something.

How does a peadophile feel? How does it feel, to know that your doing something so immorally wrong, but still want to do it.

Why am I so interested in these subjects? What makes people interested in anything?

[WillyGilligan]

Why do men, statictically, more often commit suicide by hanging or with a gun and woman slice their wrists and use pills?

How does it feel to be mentally ill. I mean, serious mental illness. Depersonalization disorder or something.

How does a peadophile feel? How does it feel, to know that your doing something so immorally wrong, but still want to do it.

Why am I so interested in these subjects? What makes people interested in anything?

The assumption that I always heard was that men often view the suicide as an aggressive act, either against themselves or the world; while women tend to romanticize the deed and want to end their life in a way that still leaves their body looking alright. Fuck if I know. Although it might be related to why women who kill their children are more likely to use drowning or poison. They are also more likely to try to protect the bodies in plastic; or in Susan Smith's case, she made sure her kids were buckled into their seats and were wearing their coats.

As for the pedophiles, I'd imagine it's fundamentally similar to the thrill people get from committing petty crimes like shoplifting. With a whole lot of sexual psychology thrown on top.

[Marius]

Why do men, statictically, more often commit suicide by hanging or with a gun and woman slice their wrists and use pills?

Obvioiusly this is because men are much smarter than women.

Actually, I think the demographics are important, as are certain cultural influences on risk factors. Suicide risk increases with age, and the highest risk group are very elderly men, particularly those whose wives have died. These are people who are serious about dying. Thirteen year old girls, regardless of how many times they cut themselves, are rarely really suicidal. And frankly, when someone overdoses on valium for the second or third time, I don't even consider that a suicide attempt.

There are patterns of crisis management. Men are more likely to respond to intense stress by abusing substances, and somewhat less likely to stay home and cry. Substance abuse, at least in the cases of alcohol intoxication or cocaine withdrawal, are risk factors for suicide. Men are also much more likely to have access to guns.

I suspect men are also more confident about their ability to complete violent and lethal suicide than women, and so are more likely to try. You can guess any reason why. Men have engaged in more violent play as children, they've been in more fights, and they probably more realistically fantasize about the effects of their own actions on causing injury. Maybe women don't hang themselves because the girl scouts don't teach knot tying.

How does it feel to be mentally ill. I mean, serious mental illness. Depersonalization disorder or something.

Depersonalization disorder is not generally a very serious illness, but it's also a very rare one to diagnose. It's characterized by dissociative symptoms such as a feeling that one is observing oneself, or that you're not connected to the world. Dissociative symptoms like these are incredibly common throughout the specturm of mental disorders and, indeed throughout normal experience. Most people have had such symptoms at one time or another, the same way most people have had periods of depressed mood or bouts of mild anxiety.

Describing how someone feels during serious mental illness is quite difficult, but the descriptions must certainly very greatly depending on which serious mental illness you're talking about. An acutely psychotic schizophrenic probably has a very different experience than an equally psychotic bipolar disorder in a manic episode. I don't know many good descriptions, but I thought Stephen Fry's documentary "The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive" was quite evocative, particularly in some of its descriptions of mania.

How does a peadophile feel? How does it feel, to know that your doing something so immorally wrong, but still want to do it.

Generally if feels awful, but painfully beyond your control. I do want to caution you, though, with a distinction. Pedophilia is simply a paraphilia characterized by sexual attraction to prepubescant children. There are a great many pedophiles - in fact probably the overwhelming majority of them - who have never touched a child, never would touch a child, and are just as horrified as you are about the idea of hurting someone that way.

Why am I so interested in these subjects? What makes people interested in anything?

Usually latent homosexuality or raging lust for your mother, but as I understand it you'll need a lot of analysis to figure all that out.

[Marius]

I've never once even considered how cells adhere to each other, and this has sent me on a great chase for the answer. Thanks, buddy! I'll stop reading and start typing this week, I promise.

Oh dear, this is so very complicated. It varies greatly based on tissue type, but the very general answer is that most of the structural cell lines - i.e., squamous cells in the skin, fibroblasts in most other connective tissues, osteoblasts in bone - lay down an extracelleular matrix of protenaceous stuff that provides adhesion and structure.

Err, in "it's 100am and I should be taking a nap on my lunch break instead of surfing Bulldrek speak" please.

Cells shit sticky, firm stuff to make them stay together and support the structure of tissues.

[3278]

We're made of many, many individual cells. How do they stick together to form a person? What keeps us from disintegrating to a pile of individual cells?

All animal cells leak. "Leak" is maybe too non-specific: the walls of animal cells are selectively permeable, meaning they let some stuff in, and some stuff out, and they're reasonably picky about which does which. [We're going to stick with animal cells because the answer for plant, and presumably fungal, cells, is somewhat different. And because presumably, you're neither a plant nor a fungus, being neither a Supox nor a Mycon.]

One of the most important things they leak are the basic building blocks of what's called the extracellular matrix [ECM], which is made up primarily of fibrous proteins and - I shit you not - GAGs [glycosaminoglycans]. The ECM makes up your connective tissues, aids in healing, and all sorts of other useful functions; it's the collagen that makes your bones strong but flexible, the chondroitin that makes your ligaments strong. On its own, though, it can't hold you together: think of it like Vasoline smeared all over a bunch of water balloons; sure, it'll make them sticky, but not enough to hang tough when the organism in question is being pursued by an angry mob, which is something evolution selects for.

For that, we have to turn to the reason this post has been delayed by so very long: cellular adhesion molecules [CAMs]. [The short answer to your question, by the way, is, "cellular adhesion molecules." I'm clearly poor at short answers.] There are various types of them, but the give big 'uns are the cadherins, the immunoglobulin superfamily, the integrins, lymphocyte homing receptors, and the selectins. None of those distinctions matter deeply to us: the point is that, sticking out from your cells like millions of tiny hairs, are proteins, which use basic chemical bonds [mostly covalent, if you remember your chemistry, which, if you do, makes you a better man than I] to produce adhesion between cells. These tiny protein strings attach to their neighbors, and serve not just to hold the whole affair together, but also to moderate communication between cells, which is of catastrophic importance if you want your giant sack of cells to not just stick together, but also actually do something.

So why the big delay? That's the fault of some microbes that live in the bellies of termites, specifically Mixotricha paradoxa, Latin for "unexpected combination of hairs." Before you start thinking I'm making this up, here's a picture:



Let's back up. There are two sorts of termites, the advanced termites and the lower termites, the difference being that advanced termites can digest the cellulose and lignins in wood without assistance. [Don't be fooled by the term "advanced:" both sorts of termite have been evolving for the same period of time, and neither is descended from the other, obviously, since the "lower" termites are alive today, and thus can't be the ancestors of other living species. It's just that the "lower" termites have evolved differently than their cousins. (I used to be some kind of moron, and though that, for instance, cows were the ancestors of humans, when in fact cows and humans share a common ancestor.) It is perhaps too much to expect that biologists will soon cease using these terms of bias, which can so easily be misconstrued.] One of these primitive termites is Mastrotermes darwiniensis, Darwin's Termite, and the way it digests the cellulose and lignin that makes up so much of its diet is through M. paradoxa, much the way we humans have colonies of bacteria within our guts, without which we could not digest food.

But the symbiosis doesn't end there: M. paradoxa is, like many microbes, coated in a tiny hairs, about 250,000 of them, called cilia, and possesses also four or five [it's not variable, I just can't remember at the moment] flagellum as well, but at the front. [Don't get hung up on the difference between flagellum and cilia; the distinction turns out to be, for most organisms, almost entirely one of size.] This is all very strange: microbes tend to have either cilia or flagellum, not both, and certainly don't have flagellum at the front! Hence Sutherland [the discoverer of M. paradoxa choosing the name. The cilia even have little basal bodies, just as you'd expect to find at the base of cilia; curiouser and curiouser.

But closer inspection, with the sort of equipment that didn't exist when Sutherland was naming M. paradoxa, has shown the startling truth: the cilia aren't parts of M. paradoxa, they're organisms in their own right, which have become an integral part of the organism! So they're not like the E. coli that live in our guts, they're more like the mitochondria that live in our cells: once free-roaming microbes that, at some indefinite point in the past, took up residence within the cell itself, a sort of cellular-level symbiosis. Turns out plants have them, too: without once free-roaming microbes [in this case, cyanobacteria], they couldn't do that photosynthesis trick they do so well. The true base of the food chain isn't plants, it's cyanobacteria. [Take a deep breath, and thank them for it: there wasn't very much free oxygen in the early Earth, and they made nearly all of what's there now.]

M. paradoxa doesn't have mitochondria: as it turns out, they have another microbe living in them, doing the same sort of job. And what of those basal bodies seen at the bottom of the cilia? Yes, again, once free-roaming microbes that have evolved to live symbiotically with M. paradoxa. As Margulis and Sagan pointed out in their delightful essay on the subject, M. paradoxa has not one, but five genomes!

So how about the CAMs? Are these tiny, hairlike proteins the final remnant of some long-forgotten microbe who made a deal with some of our earliest ancestors? No. No, there's really no chance of it. They're the wrong size, the wrong composition, the wrong everything, to be anything like M. paradoxa's "pseudocilia." But a negative result is still knowledge, the reduction of prior uncertainty, and the voyage is always worth it even if the destination isn't a positive one.

[Marius]

Mooch: "Cells shit sticky, firm stuff to make them stay together and support the structure of tissues."

Earl: 1,014 words, some of it about termites, and an illustration.

I really ought to hang out with this guy more often.

[Eva]

Can I come?

[Sam]

Okay, this one has me stumped as well:

How much air is there on the planet, and if population growth lives up to estimation, will we always have enough to breathe?

[Cash]

Mooch: "Cells shit sticky, firm stuff to make them stay together and support the structure of tissues."

Earl: 1,014 words, some of it about termites, and an illustration.

I really ought to hang out with this guy more often.

rofl!

Both answers were great. I got the bare bones answer for now and then I'll be able to dive into the in depth answer later when I get home.

[3278]

I really ought to hang out with this guy more often.

Can I come?

Only if this time, I don't have the superflu.

[Van Der Litreb]

Usually latent homosexuality or raging lust for your mother, but as I understand it you'll need a lot of analysis to figure all that out.

Latent? Please. Talk about fla-ming!

While we're on the subject of superflu, can one of you please explain the difference between influenza and the common cold? It was recently explained to me by my doctor, but I long ago traded my memory for .. something. Feel free to pretend that you're speaking to someone whose only academic skills lie in speaking languages and talking about literature.

And while we're on that subject, how does human memory work, and why are, uh, some people more prone to forget things?

Thank you.

[Kitt]

How do pet food companies know that their food is "better tasting"?

How can something be both new and improved? Doesn't it have to be in existance to be improved, this making it not new?

How many different pictures must be drawn for a one minute clip of traditionally animated video? Think Disney's Little Mermaid.

[Van Der Litreb]

How many different pictures must be drawn for a one minute clip of traditionally animated video? Think Disney's Little Mermaid.

I believe most films are usually shown at 24 frames per second, so high quality animations would have that many drawings just for one second's worth. Obviously, only whatever is animated needs to be redrawn, which is why you'll usually see static backgrounds in animated films. An interesting use of static backgrounds is something called the multiplane effect (or, in computer games, parallax scrolling, which became synonymous with an Amiga 500 game called Shadow of the Beast); by putting several layers of background drawings on top of each other, you can, by moving the different layers at different speeds, create a visual illusion of depth. Here is a good example from Wikipedia.