#74: Language

How come there's a name for every finger but not for every toe?
You've got the thumb, the index finger, the middle finger, the ring finger and the little finger. But on your feet between the big and baby toes, there's no proper names for the appendages. It's embarrassing having to tell a doctor you've got a pain in the little piggy that had roast beef.

#73: Movies and TV

Why does my VCR remote control have an eject button?
Don't I have to get off my butt and go to the machine to get the tape anyway? Or do some VCRs have such powerful ejection systems that they can shoot the tape across the room to you? (Actually that might be kind of fun.)

#71: Computing

Why do search engines give something like 439,647 matches for a query?
Does anyone ever look at every match? Does anyone ever check out the 318,337th link? Would anyone be upset if search engines limited their replies to, say, the first 1,000? Not that it matters. Just wondering.

#70: Language

Why is the guy who runs the team in a hockey game called the coach
but the guy who does it for a baseball team is called the manager? To further confuse matters there are managers on hockey teams and coaches in baseball too, but they have altogether different jobs.

#69: Computing

How come whenever a computer crashes,
it's always when you've forgotten to save the file you've worked on for the past three hours?

#68: Driving

Why do people act so differently in cars?
I was driving in the "fast" lane on the highway the other day while it was completely jammed. I kept pace with all the vehicles in front of me. Yet car after car from behind tried to get around me and squeeze in front. Which I guess made their drivers feel better because they were now maybe half a second further ahead in the miles-long line of vehicles. Yet I can't remember ever being in a slow line on foot — for a movie, say, or at the grocery store — and having people trying to butt in before me.

#67: Language

Why has "monosyllabic" got so many syllables?

#66: Computing

Why is it when you're backing up, transferring files or
doing anything else for which the computer gives you a counter showing how much is done, it often seems to race through all the percentages until it hits 99% — and then hangs there for a while to keep you in suspense about whether it's going to finish or crash?

#65: Products

Exactly how big is a "scoop of raisins"
as in "two scoops of raisins in every package of Kellogg's Raisin Bran"? I ask because I checked out a gigantic box of Raisin Bran at the store the other day and it too supposedly has "two scoops of raisins" — the same as my regular medium-size box. And the same as the tiniest box. It made me wonder if bigger scoops are used for bigger boxes. Or do the scoops stay the same, so you get fewer raisins per ounce of bran flakes as the boxes get bigger? What's the scoop, Kellogg's?

#64: Computing

Why do "Canadian" search engines on the Web
give you the same number — or even more — results when you check the "Canadian sites only" option? I just searched "cheap tricks" on www.yahoo.ca and got 66,300 pages. Then I asked for Canadian sites only and got 141,000 matches. How could there be twice as many sites for this in Canada than in the whole world including Canada? But that's not all. It turns out most of the hits given for supposedly "Canadian sites" are for Web sites in other countries. Is there any point to the "Canadian sites only" option?

#63: Computing

Same thing for other so-called "advanced" options in search engines...
Ever tried to narrow down your search by specifying "exact phrase required" And then got 57,492 matches of which only three use your exact phrase?

#62: Animals

Why is it always in the middle of the night that the cat upchucks hairballs?
We're invariably awakened by that kgack-kgacking noise in the dark house. Of course, then in the morning we have to try to find the mess and hope we don't step into it first.

#61: Computing

Why do PCs check the floppy disk drive for the operating system first?
And then, if you happen to have left a floppy in the drive, the computer gives you a message that it can't find the system on it. Well, duh. Doesn't it realize today's operating systems are several hundred or even thousand times too big to fit on a floppy disk?

#60: Politics

Why is it politically wrong to be "politically correct"?
It sort of made sense back when liberal values ruled the world. You had to appear progressive then to get ahead, and so the minority opposition could justifiably sneer at "politically correct" pretensions. But that period ended about 20 years ago. In the Reagan years, conservative values became de rigeur for anyone with political aspirations. By the 1990s even former liberals were speaking out of the right sides of their mouths. Crack down on welfare cheaters, reduce taxes, oppose affirmative action, stiffen prison sentences — these have all become part of the common political credo of the times. In other words, right-wing views are today's politically correct standards. Yet we continue to use the phrase "politically correct" to denigrate minority views that have been under siege for two decades and are politically disadvantageous to hold.

#59: Computing

Why doesn't a PC keyboard have an on/off button?
It has other keys (Pause/Break, Scroll Lock, Print Screen) that you hardly ever touch. Why not a key that people would use everyday to start and shut down their systems? Is it, maybe, because Macs have one?

#58: Computing

Why don't Macintosh mice have right-click buttons?
Instead we have that awkward holding down of the Control key while clicking to get context menus. Why don't Mac users have a second mouse button? Is it, maybe, because PCs have it?

#57: Human Behaviour

Why do people on the phone say, "Send me an email about that"?
Can't they just take a note down while we're talking? There's something paradoxical about this. Email was supposed to make communication simpler. Instead it's duplicating work because people expect to get email confirmation of discussions, orders, appointments — anything that would have been taken care of with the original conversation in the old days. Maybe this explains another great mystery of my life these days: If email is supposed to save so much time, why do I now spend half my day sending and answering email and have far less time to do other work?

#56: Politics

Why doesn't everybody realize the Canadian Alliance is a Liberal plot?
I've been on to this one for a couple of years now. You think a leader as bad as Stockwell Day could come about through natural political processes? You think it's just coincidental that the opposition to Chrιtien's rule in Ottawa is split between a guy (Day) who thinks humans walked with dinosaurs and a has-been conservative leader (Joe Clark) who probably did walk with dinosaurs?

#55: Products

Why do inkjet printers pretend to tell you how much ink is left?
Most do not really check the level of ink in each cartridge. They calculate, based on the number of pages you've output, how much ink may be left. An inkjet will sometimes also say you're empty when you know you've got lots of ink left. It might even refuse to print, insisting it's out of ink. So you take the cartridge out and put it back in again and it's fooled it into thinking it's got a new cartridge and is full again. Of course, later when that cartridge does run out, the printer will insist it is still half full. Never trust an inkjet.

#54: Language

Why is it when you send something by car it's called a shipment
and when you send it by ship it's called cargo? Thanks to reader Al Jinn for this mystery. (I'm going to retire and let my readers write this column from now on, I'm getting so many suggestions. I didn't realize the world is so mysterious to so many other people!)

#53: Business

When you call Bell, why are you asked to input your phone number?
Hasn't the telephone company heard of Call Display? Okay, to be fair, maybe you're not calling from the line you're calling about. So then, why is it after you enter the number you're calling about and finally you do get someone on the phone — why is it that the first thing they ask for is the number you're calling about! Don't they know there are these new-fangled instruments available now, called computers, that can actually store information and pass it on to the person taking the call?

#52: Movies

Why do people who travel through time in science fiction
always end up in exactly the same place? Think about it. Over the years the earth moves around the sun, the sun travels around the galaxy and the galaxy shoots several light years further out in the expanding universe. If you stayed in the same place and went back or forward in time, you would almost certainly be dropped into space far, far from Earth. Even going back or forward a few minutes would be problematic, the earth moves so quickly relative to the galaxy. And this is not even taking into account the rising and falling of continental masses, the build-up of materials on the earth's surface or a hundred and one other factors that make it more likely you would appear in the past or future in the middle of the ground or a thousand feet in the air.

#51: Computing

Does anyone really know what those strange keys are for?
Between your QWERTY keyboard and your number pad are things like PrntScrn/SysRq, Pause/Break, and Scroll Lock. Does anyone use these? Do they even work? Hit them and your screen doesn't print, the system is not requested, nothing pauses or breaks — and where is that scroll thingy that you can apparently lock? Why do manufacturers keep putting these keys on keyboards if we never need them?