A note from Cecil Adams | Plus: Is Prevagen, the cognitive supplement, as effective as its TV ad states?
Category: The Straight Dope
The Straight Dope originated as a weekly column in the pages of the Chicago Reader and is now owned and operated by the Chicago Sun-Times. See The Straight Dope website and FAQ for more.
Posted inNews & Politics
Why aren’t internal organs symmetrical?
From the outside, our bodies appear to be: eyes, ears, arms, and elbows.
Posted inNews & Politics
Why aren’t there flea collars for people?
That’s the not the real problem with vector-borne diseases.
Posted inNews & Politics
Can Congress be given the authority to override a presidential pardon?
Bill Cosby’s conviction leads Cecil Adams to a consideration of whether and how presidential pardons could be overturned.
Posted inNews & Politics
Why are different races correlated with two different types of earwax, and when did this divergence occur?
A bold new era for earwax research has dawned.
Posted inNews & Politics
‘How did the terms nuts and bananas come to refer to something or someone as crazy?’
Cecil goes crazy in this week’s Straight Dope.
Posted inNews & Politics
Why is coca only cultivated in South America?
Other lucrative plants like coffee and chocolate are grown in multiple locations.
Posted inNews & Politics
How often do emergency vehicles get into car accidents?
Are police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks immune to traffic accidents?
Posted inNews & Politics
Are Zika and toxoplasmosis related?
Should we fear microcephaly causing diseases equally?
Posted inNews & Politics
How dangerous are cows?
The Straight Dope: Should you get a moo-ve on if a cow comes charging your way?
Posted inNews & Politics
Where did two-letter postal abbreviations come from?
The Straight Dope mails in this week’s column.
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope examines the Reader’s 40 years
In the age of the Internet this surprises no one, but the genius of the Reader was to show that you could publish a quality newspaper that you gave away
Posted inNews & Politics
Were “concrete shoes” a favored technique of mob hitmen?
Dear Cecil: I’m sure you’ve heard the term “concrete shoes,” mobsters’ choice of swimwear for fellas with rodent traits and other individuals that ran afoul of them. Is there any truth to it? — Ale, Bangkok Cecil replies: When your question came in, Ale, I thought: At last, a chance to have it out with […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
Just read one of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman volumes entitled The Kindly Ones. I was taken aback when one character relates a disturbing variant of “Sleeping Beauty” described as the original version of the tale, from back before it got watered down. Is this true, or is the story something out of Neil Gaiman’s brilliant mind? […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
I just read in an academic paper (Macintyre and Sooman, Lancet, 1991) that in modern populations, the cuckoldry rate–i.e., the rate at which men are deceived into raising offspring that are genetically not their own–is 10 to 15 percent. This would make genealogy and family reunions a moot point. What’s the straight dope? –Curious, via […]