#99: Star Trek

How do doors on starships know when someone's going to go through them? Sure, even today we have sensors that open doors when we approach them. But on the Enterprise and Voyager people are always standing beside doors, passing them, even approaching them and then pausing to talk to someone—and the doors never open by mistake. It's only when someone decides to actually leave that the doors hiss open. How do they know that?

#98: Language

How come flammable means the same as inflammable?
Or how can habitable be the same as inhabitable? So a flammable habitable dwelling is as big a firetrap as an inflammable inhabitable dwelling!

#97: Driving

Why do car speedometers go up to 200 kph
when they will never reach near that speed?  For one thing it's generally illegal to go faster than 100 kph. And even if we speedsters tried to, we couldn't get our cars up past 150 clicks. So why pretend it's possible on the speed gauge?

#96: Business

Why do drugstores make sick people walk to the back of the store
to get their prescription medicine, but let healthy people get their cigarettes at the front? (It's another question why drug stores even sell cancer-sticks. I guess they are drug stores after all, even for harmful drugs like nicotine.)

#95: Religion

Why do Adam and Eve have bellybuttons?
Navels of course are created by the cutting of the umbilical cord that attaches newborns to their mothers. But if Adam and Eve were the first people on earth, they could not have had mothers to whom they'd been connected. Hence no insies or outsies. Yet to be the perfect human beings that they were supposedly created as, they're shown with bellybuttons. And they were created in God's image, so he must have one too. How did He get His?

#94: Language

How can people who say they "could care less" mean exactly
the same thing as the people who say they "couldn't care less"?

#93: The paranormal

How come people are always Cleopatra in past lives?
In history there were a hell of a lot more slaves, peasants, factory workers, spear carriers, cannon fodder, nobodies who died in childhood, etc., than royalty or other famous figures. Yet it's usually the Cleopatras, mighty warriors, great leaders, famous romantic figures, and so on, that people "remember" being in past-life regressions. And come to think of it, how could there be more than one person alive today who used to be Cleo? Multiple personality disorder in ancient Egypt?

#92: Human Behaviour

How come 99 percent of people are unable to lick their elbows?
And why, when they read this, will 75 percent of people immediately try to do it?

#91: Computing

Why is the Caps Lock key so close to the Shift key?
If a keyboard were purposely designed to make me continually type lines of all capitals by accident, it would be exactly like my keyboard today. I know, I know, the layout was inherited from typewriters. But in old-fashioned typewriters it took real effort to hold down the Shift key, and the Caps Lock key felt different, so you knew when you'd hit it. On computer keyboards all the keys feel the same and take the same amount of non-effort. So why not move the Caps Lock out of harm's way?

#90: The paranormal

If Deepak Chopra really has discovered how to stop aging,
how come he looks older every time you see him? The self-help guru has sold a zillion books and makes a zillion dollars a year from giving lectures about how the aging process can be reversed by the power of the mind. Yet, look at him the next time he's on TV. Is the mind weakening a little there, Deepak, around the jowls? Are the mental powers turning a little grey on top?

#89: Language
Where are all the young folk with feck and gorm?
I've only ever heard about feckless or gormless youth, never about young people who might have those qualities. Maybe they're hanging out with the really couth adults?

#88: Computing
Why are CD-ROM drivers provided on...CD-ROMs?
You find this out, of course, when your CD drive stops working and you're advised by some expert to reinstall the software driver. So you go through the material that came with your computer looking for the driver to reinstall, find the CD with it on, stick it in your CD-ROM drive and.... Huh?

#87: Driving
Why do we turn our car radios down when we're looking for an address?
Don't think you do? Neither did I when I first heard this. Then next time I got lost I noticed myself, sure enough, shutting off the radio, so I could find my way driving. Don't know why.

#86: God
If God didn’t want us to pick our noses,
then why did he make our fingers and nostrils exactly the same size?

#85: Computing
When your modem won’t work,
why does Windows' troubleshooting routine advise you to get updated drivers online?

#84: Language
Why do people always say "You could get hit by a bus tomorrow"
to indicate how precarious life is? It's always a bus they expect to get hit by. They never say, "You could be hit by a train" or "You could be run down by a Volkswagen". Are buses really so dangerous? Then why do we allow them on the roads?

#83: Religion
Why do winning athletes thank God for their victory,
but we never see players on the other team blaming God for their loss? If He made one side win, He must have made the other side lose. But you never hear, "We had a good running game, and our pass reception was great, but thanks to God we lost. Guess he liked the other guys better."

#82: Movies
Is there a hidden theme of incest in Back to the Future?
In Back to the Future 3, Marty (Michael J. Fox) is transported back a century and meets his ancestors. And, surprise, his great-great-grandmother in 1885 is a dead ringer for his mother from 1985. Strange enough that appearances could pass through several generations without change. But it's completely bizarre that his great-great-grandmother is an ancestor on Marty's father's side and yet is identical to his mother! How could that be?

#81: Computing
Why is it people think they can write any insulting thing in an email
as long as they attach a smiley to it? "Your marketing proposal is the stupidest idea I've heard this year and moreover you would be the hands-down winner of the ugliest-employee-of-the -month award if not for the fact that your repulsive body odour keeps everyone from wanting to come within ten feet of you. ;) By the way, how are the wife and kids?"